


Little Moment: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

by Ericobard, shadows59



Series: Little Moments Universe [5]
Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Gen, How Max Tennyson Got His Callsign, It wasn't always called the Rustbucket, Jim Huxby is a Son of a Bitch, Little Moments Continuity, Max Loves Rock And Roll, Nobody Touches Max's Radio, The Plumbers and the Galactic Enforcers Don't Usually Get Along, Whiskey Team Has a Reputation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ericobard/pseuds/Ericobard, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadows59/pseuds/shadows59
Summary: In 1979, a Rookie Plumber is assigned to Whiskey Team under the command of Colonel Max Tennyson. With UFOs on the loose and nuclear missiles going missing, it's up to them to follow the trail and put down the threat. Wherever it leads them. It's time to see if a Marine has what it takes to keep up.
Series: Little Moments Universe [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1350850
Comments: 9
Kudos: 7





	1. Welcome To The Party Pal

**_Little Moment: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson and Shadows59

* * *

**Chapter One: Welcome to the Party Pal**

_ Plumbers Central Base “Avalon”  _

_ (Classified Location) _

_ March 7th, 1979 C.E. _

  
  


“ - as of this moment, your record means precisely  _ dick.” _

Jerry Baylor blinked at the curt words thrown at him by the scowling old man whose callsign was Merlin and who nobody  _ dared _ call Jim when he was around to hear it. It was more than a little disheartening, honestly. He’d been a First Lieutenant O-2 in the Marine Corps due for promotion when word came down that he was being ‘reassigned’ to a new unit. It was only after the transfer papers were a done deal and he was being shipped out from Butler in Japan back stateside that he’d been told he wasn’t going to be a Marine any longer. He got told that he was going to be a Plumber.

Initial heartbreak and fury aside, once they landed in California and he was taken to an installation out in a forest for his initial briefing, Jerry had quickly stowed the attitude. They didn’t mean someone who fixed clogged up toilets, no; Plumbers with a Capital P were something else entirely. Given what he’d been shown, he considered it a miracle that he didn’t faint, and he was certain his face had been white. The secret history of the world was laid out in front of him - that aliens had been coming to Earth for a lot longer than their public debut in 1952 in Washington D.C, and that most of them weren’t all that friendly. Then he found out that that was all he’d be dealing with,  _ if he was lucky. _

The information about magic being  _ real _ and the existence of extradimensional threats…

But for all of that, Jerry was certain he’d manage all right. He was a goddamned  _ Marine, _ not quitting had been beaten into him back in boot camp and that lesson hadn’t gone away. There’d be a learning curve, but he had the skills. These Plumbers had gone looking for the best of the best of the best. They’d chosen him.

Somehow, that just wasn’t good enough for General James Huxby, the man who ran the show and put everyone on edge just by standing too close to them. The old man was dressed in a full suit coat like he’d walked out of the 1940’s or 50’s, hat and all, and the scowl didn’t go away as he raised an eyebrow at his newest recruit, puffing on an old-fashioned tobacco pipe clenched in his teeth. “You have something to say, lieutenant?”

“No, sir.” Jerry answered reflexively. “I didn’t think you had asked for a response.”

“No. I hadn’t.” The scowl softened just a touch and Jim harrumphed. “Nice to know you’ve still got some of that Marine Corps discipline in you. Let’s see if you can make that rub off on others a little. You’d better. It’s the reason I’m skipping the usual rotation that rookies go through and am assigning you to one of our advance teams. A squad of troubleshooters. They’re decent at their job, but they can get a little cocky at times. Your job is to listen to everything that they tell you to do, try not to get yourself killed, and do your damned best to show them what military disciple looks like. Lord knows they need it after the goddamned  _ mess _ they made in Colorado.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jim nodded at the crisp return. “I’m putting you under Colonel Tennyson. His unit callsign is Whiskey, and he’s Whiskey One. He’ll introduce you to the rest of his team. They’ve been told to expect a rookie today, so get to supply, grab your gear, and then get down to the motor pool to meet up with them.”

“Yes, sir. General, sir?” Jerry asked hesitantly. “What vehicle will they be signing out today?”

Merlin made a face full of disgust and irritation. “Trust me, lieutenant. You’ll know it when you see it.” He waved his hand to his office door. “Dismissed.”

***

_ Avalon _

_ Motor Pool _

  
  


Baylor wasn’t sure what to make of Merlin’s cryptic answer. He’d know it when he saw it,  _ sure. _ The motor pool was full of vehicles of every kind, from innocuous black Lincoln town cars with their enormous front ends to U.S. Army troop transports. There was even a section of the massive underground space that seemed dedicated to helicopters and fighter aircraft, and Jerry wondered at it until a shutter overhead opened and a screaming jet descended down through it as casually as a person riding an elevator might. Aside from the glowing burners of its exhaust blasting out beneath it, naturally. 

“Hey, Rookie!” He barely heard the shout over the noise the jet put out, and it almost caught him by surprise when someone walked towards him off of his left side. He turned towards the man and tamped down the impulse to slip into a defensive stance, which proved to be the right move given that the fellow walking towards him was dressed in engineer’s coveralls. He was trying to talk, but Jerry couldn’t even follow his lips, and the fair-haired man rolled his eyes and looked towards the jet, waiting until the thing had landed and its turbines had begun to spin down.

“Finally.” The man exhaled. “Those Harriers are something else but they’re noisy as hell. Just got them in, they won’t be available to the military for another year at the earliest. Whaddya think?”

Jerry stared at the jet that the mechanic had called a Harrier and blinked. “It must be a pain to service.”

“Ha!” The mechanic guffawed. “You’d be right about that. But enough shop talk. You need something, Rookie?”

“That obvious?” Jerry asked dryly, and the man just stared at him. “I’m looking for Colonel Tennyson and his team.”

“Whiskey 1?” The mechanic took a step back and re-evaluated him. “Oh, wow. Yeah, scuttlebutt was they were getting a fifth.” He pointed with a thumb. “They’re back that way. They’ll be around the ugliest ride in the lot, jiggering something up again.” The mechanic made a face at that, and Jerry could only wonder as the man gave him a nod and wandered off, muttering to himself about  _ ‘goddamn do-it-yourselfers.’ _

Even more intrigued, or maybe just worried, Jerry hoisted his bag of gear and made his way further back into the depths of the motor pool. At long last, he pulled to a stop past a row of humvees and troop trucks, gaping at the one mode of transport which had no earthly business in a lot full of military vehicles.

Jerry Baylor had heard of them, of course. Recreational vehicles, RV’s for short. He’d seen campers that got dragged behind pickup trucks, and he recalled another recruit from Iowa who told him once about a school bus that his parents, a farmer/carpenter and a housewife, had painted blue and converted into one. This one looked like one of the newer ones that had come out a few years back from Michigan. It was an all-in-one with futuristic streamlined angles, looking factory floor fresh and gleaming under the halogen lamps along the ceiling. The back end of it was full of radio dishes and other gear, which  _ definitely _ wasn’t factory standard. The side door was open, and two white men were outside of it arguing back and forth as they hefted supply boxes while a third with American Indian features and sun-kissed skin sat in the side door, shaking his head as he carved at a block of wood. Unlike Jerry, none of them were dressed in the Plumbers regulation uniform, a gray suit capable of ‘hermetically sealing’ when a helmet was added to it. Jerry was wearing his minus the helmet, which was stuck at the side of his waist by some mechanism he still hadn’t figured out yet. Magnets, maybe?

“...the last time, no! I am  _ not _ going on another goddamn SCP patrol with you eating nothing but baked beans and vienna sausages!” The sterner looking man in flannel and blue jeans growled out as Jerry got closer to the RV. 

“Really? You’re going to complain about that after all the weird crap the Colonel makes us eat?” The other man in khakis and a white button-down with the top three buttons undone complained, still hefting a supply box full of canned food. 

“The Colonel’s food doesn’t turn the inside of the MCC into a gas chamber!” Flannel guy screamed back at him.

The Indian in the side door glanced up from his wood carving and noticed Jerry approaching. “That’s enough, you two. We have company.” The bickering came to a close as three sets of eyes settled on Jerry, and he shifted his feet once before approaching them.

“Lieutenant Baylor, reporting for duty.” He announced himself. “I’m looking for Colonel Tennyson?”

“Yeah. You’re the FNG all right.” White shirt guy muttered, walking up and shoving himself past the Indian in the door to put the supplies away.

“The Colonel’s inside and up front.” The Indian explained, and Jerry finally noticed how most of his dark black hair was tied back behind his head in a single braid. “I’m Wes Green, callsign Whiskey 2. Make any cracks about tepees and I’ll deck you, I’m  _ Navajo _ and yes, that matters. This here’s Leslie Cooper and Mr. Personality who just went inside is Phil Billings, they’re Whiskey 3 and 4 respectively. That makes you Whiskey 5, Rookie.”

_ Rookie. _ If Jerry hadn’t been forewarned by Merlin about how his previous skills didn’t mean a thing here, he would have bristled from the name. Even with it, he stiffened up. “Baylor is fine, sir. What does SCP mean?”

“We didn’t ask for you, so I’ll call you what I want, Rookie.” Whiskey 2 huffed softly. “SCP stands for  _ Secure, Contain, Protect. _ It means we go out driving around looking for trouble or waiting for a call to point us in the right direction. Usually, trouble finds us first.” The Indian got down from his spot and cleared the door. “Stow your gear and head up front. You may as well introduce yourself before we take off, we’re wheels up in 5. I have to see how much of Phil’s pork and beans I can throw out before we get going, or Coop here’s gonna be bitching for two states about it.”

“Damn right I will.” Flannel guy, ‘Coop’ muttered, and undid a hidden panel next to the front wheel well to stow more of their gear in the hidden compartment. 

Baylor made his way inside and took notice of the interior of the RV. It had a lived-in smell and there was a dreamcatcher hanging from the ceiling near the back. Whiskey 4, Billings, was in the kitchenette stowing cans and still grumbling to himself. Baylor could hear soft music drowned out by a pair of talking voices in the direction of the RV’s nose, and after he dropped his bag on the table set up in the dining nook, he walked up towards it.

His first look at Colonel Max Tennyson was startling. The man was dressed in tan khakis and a red hawaiian shirt with white flowers that was so bright it made him wonder if this was a mission or a vacation he’d been assigned on. While the strains of The Who played quietly from the sound system, the Colonel’s attention was wholly on a louder voice coming from the speakers over it and a small television built into the dash. Although Baylor had never seen a screen that  _ flat _ before…

_ “...ill early in the season, so you may be running into some leftover winter weather on your patrol route.” _ A cheerful female voice said.  _ “So I hope you packed your snow tires, Whiskey 1.” _

The Colonel’s brown hair was trimmed flat and close to his head in a military buzzcut that seemed out of place with his clothes. He chuckled and was about to respond when he froze and his eyes swiveled back to Baylor, who reflexively came to attention. He had a broad-shouldered build and gave Baylor a single nod before turning back to the radio. “We’ll be fine, darling. Nothing we haven’t dealt with before. Want me to bring you anything back?”

_ “You still owe me a coffee mug from North Dakota, Whiskey. See if you can’t remember to grab one this time.” _ The woman’s voice was teasing, and Whiskey 1 chuckled quietly.

“I’ll see what I can do, Control. Whiskey Team, out.” He pushed a button and the television with a map of the U.S. on it went dark, leaving only the strains of  _ Join Together _ as Max Tennyson turned and gave Jerry his full attention. “So. You’re Baylor, then?”

“Yes, sir.” Baylor saluted. “Jerry Baylor, from the Marines.”

“I was Air Force.” Max told him. He gestured to the passenger seat, and Baylor gratefully moved to sit down in it as Max faced forward again and yawned, scratching at the stubble on his chin. The man started when Jerry’s hand came close to the gear shifter on the console between them as he reached for a handhold. The stick didn’t sport the usual gear diagram on the top, but a red button with a flip-cover over it. “Woah, careful there Rookie! You don’t  _ ever _ press the red button!”

“Sorry, sir.” Baylor apologized, settling his hands into his lap. “What does it do?” Max shook his head, ignoring the question and frowning at him.

“I’ll be honest with you, Rookie. You’re only here because we got on Merlin’s shit list. I’m not keen on bringing in someone who hasn’t even seen Malta or Tranquility Base yet, much less someone I didn’t pick. Which means that Merlin assigned you to us for a reason.” The stare turned harder. “You a spy for him, son?” Baylor was taken aback at the question and found he couldn’t speak. He settled for a shake of his head, and though Tennyson didn’t seem entirely appeased by it, he let it go. “By now I imagine that they’ve given you the initial briefing on what sort of fires we put out, right?”

“Yes, sir. Before we even got to Avalon.” Jerry nodded, and Max hummed thoughtfully.

“Right. Well, I’m assuming that Wes gave you the introductions before you got in here, so let me fill you in. The Plumbers are the best kept secret in the world. The average joe doesn’t know we exist. More importantly, they don’t know that the troubles we deal with exist either. It’s why the rest of us are dressed casually. Anyone spots us going down the road in my girl here, they’ll just think we’re a bunch of guys on vacation going on a camping trip.”

_ Hiding in plain sight, _ Baylor realized, and found himself admiring the logic. “Sir, Whiskey 2 implied that trouble has a habit of finding you.”

Max laughed again, a little more honestly this time. “Well, he isn’t wrong. It must be the Tennyson luck, but usually all we have to do is go driving around and something pops up. A rogue magic user or cult trying something, an unauthorized alien incursion, or just general weirdness. Then we stop it, clean it up, and move on so John Q. Public is none the wiser.”

“Permission to ask a question, sir?”

“Granted.”

“...Is that right, sir? To just...cover it up?” Baylor asked tentatively. Max looked a little more tired at the question for reasons he couldn’t fathom, and the man rubbed his chin stubble again.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s what we do, and it’s what the Plumbers have  _ been _ doing since World War II, if you go digging into the history.” Baylor shivered at that, recalling the video footage that he was shown in his briefings. Footage taken from B-17 bombers of the rampaging monsters that the Nazis had conjured up through the mass sacrifices in their concentration camps, enormous things as big as buildings with teeth and claws and tentacles and scales that had taken entire squadrons full of high explosive ordnance to put down. “You tell me, son. You think the world is ready to learn that magic and monsters are real, and that unfriendly aliens from the stars are the least of our worries? I never could come up with an answer. It’s just too big for me.”

Baylor mutely nodded his head, and that was that. 

Everyone else on the team had finally gotten on board, and Baylor looked up at the sound of the side door closing in time to see Whiskey 2 walking up front towards them.  “You’re in my seat, Rookie.” Wes said, and Baylor got up and moved out of the way. 

“Everyone squared away, Wes?” Max asked, finally strapping himself in.

“Everyone but the Rookie here.” Wes indicated, glancing at Baylor meaningfully.

“Grab a seat in the dining nook, kid.” Max told him, smiling. He turned the ignition and the RV rumbled to life, then while Baylor was heading back, the music came to a stop. The Rookie sat down and looked up front to see Max ejecting an 8-Track from the tape deck before slamming another one into the player.

“Oh, come on.” Whiskey 2 complained. “Max, can’t you play something else besides Rock and Roll?”

“I’m driving, so it’s my music.” Max grinned, and then the steady rhythm and guitar work of REO Speedwagon bled into the air.

“Oh, yeah. Boss is playing the good shit now.” Whiskey 4 grinned, uncapping a bottle of Pepsi as he slid into the booth across from the Rookie. 

“So, Max. Once more, we go to hunt the Buffalo.” Wes Green said loudly from up front, in an exaggerated voice that could have been ripped straight from a western film. 

“You’re never gonna forgive me for that, are you?” Max asked the other man.

“Save my life a few more times instead of me saving yours and I’ll think about it.” The man said. There was a story there, and Baylor was interested in hearing it, but Billings and Cooper just chuckled and didn’t say a word in explanation.

“Welcome to the Plumbers.” Cooper said instead, and Max gunned the engine of the RV, starting them out of the motor pool and Avalon’s underground base.

They headed for the surface, and untold dangers.

***

_ North Dakota, I-94 Corridor _

_ 10 Miles West of Belfield _

_ March 9th, 1979 C.E. _

_ 10:07 P.M. _

  
  


While they drove northwest through Oregon, they listened to Chicago. In the small span of Idaho they passed through, the 8-Track blared out Orleans. Through the whole of Montana, they listened to Kansas and then Boston. With Colonel Tennyson behind the wheel and in firm control of the radio, there was no escaping the deluge of rock and roll, the man lived and breathed it. Baylor would have killed for the man to just put it over to a radio station, but he’d only asked once halfway across Montana and gotten a snort for it. The rest of the squad was sedate and relaxed, and the Rookie’d found himself roped into a three-way game of poker that he and Whiskey 3 and 4 played for Peanut M&M’s which lasted until they stopped for a bite to eat in Helena. They’d slept in the RV, with Whiskey 3 and 4 taking the foldout bunks and Max crashing in the driver’s seat. Wes shared the foldout couch bed with the Rookie, and later complained that he snored.

It couldn’t have been more than half an hour or so since they crossed the border into North Dakota (With another suitably loud announcement from the Colonel up front) before the man himself came back with Whiskey 2 right on his heels. Baylor did a double take and stared past them to the empty seats at the front of the RV, looking out through the safety glass to the highway that they were somehow still driving down. Max caught his stare and chuckled.

“Relax, Rookie. The autopilot can take over for a while, there’s no traffic this time of night.” 

Baylor gave the empty driver’s seat another dubious look before he shook his head. “Just how much technology do you have packed in this crate, sir?”

“Everything that the Plumbers could beg, borrow, or steal.” Whiskey 3 said, more than a little smugly. “The self-guided autopilot’s my work, we just installed it last year. Had to wait until we could manufacture our own integrated circuits to bridge the gap between salvaged alien computer cores and existing gear.”

“Coop’s our tech man.” Max explained, motioning around the circle. “Wes is our best scout, and Phil is heavy weapons.” Which may have been another reason for why Baylor had been put with them; He’d been second in his class in Sniper School, and the first had taken a teaching position after graduation. There wasn’t a designated sniper on the squad. 

Or that was what he tried to tell himself anyway.  _ You’re only here because we got on Merlin’s shit list _ , the Colonel had said. 

“Is this when you’re finally gonna tell us what we’re doing out here in the ass-end of nowhere, sir?” Whiskey 4 demanded. “They still have snow on the ground up here.”

Max nodded, and the smile he’d been wearing disappeared in an instant. Baylor couldn’t help but sit up a little straighter.

“Starting in the late 50’s, there were UFO’s sniffing around our nuclear weapons. The first ones were kind of innocent, just flybys during rocket tests. Overflights of nuclear refineries and power plants. They got less innocent throughout the 60’s. Rockets shot down during boost phase test flights, with the warhead zapped clean off. Missiles carted around on convoys disappeared after their crews reported saucer sightings and blacked out for an hour, and missile bases got razed to the ground with no sign of their missiles on the pads after.”

“I thought our nuclear missiles were stored in underground silos.” Baylor interrupted, and Max’s answering smile was more than a little grim.

“They are now. They weren’t always, and they didn’t dig holes in the ground because they were afraid of the Russians taking them out.” That sent a shiver down his spine, and Baylor found himself wondering.

“I don’t get it, boss.” Cooper said. “What would X-Rays want with nuclear weapons? And do we know which aliens are gunning for them?” 

Max shook his head. “We don’t know. Whoever they are, they’ve been flying bar-standard spaceships, saucer and cigar-shaped craft. Our contacts in the Galactic Enforcers, when they bother to talk to us, can’t give us a solid lead there. The only thing we do know is what they’re after. That’s why we’ve been driving this stretch.”

And Baylor finally got it. “The Minuteman silos. You’re not driving us around, you’re following a search pattern.”

“Along the northern U.S. sector, yeah.” Max nodded. “There are five teams patrolling the Russian and Siberian bases, and two more squads running the central and southern U.S. sectors. It’s a waiting game. With any luck, we’ll have a team close enough to intercept before our uninvited guests get away with their thieving. And if we can bring down their ship, Coop, you can ask them in person why they’re stealing our nukes.”

“Why now?” Baylor asked, and all eyes in the RV went to him. “The patrols, sir. Have they been going on for years? Or if we’re just starting now,  _ why?” _

Wes Green raised an eyebrow. “That’s not a bad question, Rookie.” He looked over to Max and some silent conversation passed between them as the men eyed each other. Max gave a slight nod, and Wes turned back to Baylor. “We’ve been running patrols for years, but it wasn’t until we got some decent computers that we could start to compile the reports and look for a pattern. And even with that, we didn’t have enough gear to hope to make a dent. Now we do.”

“You can shoot down a spaceship?” Baylor blurted out, and that got a low chuckle from Max in response.

“Yeah. You can, if you’re really lucky and they’re really stupid. But having better gear helps.”

Baylor nearly opened his mouth to blurt out another followup question, but the sound of a chirping alarm from the front of the RV had the other four men going grim in moments. Max and West turned around and went for the front seats almost faster than he could follow. The heavy impact of a hand on his shoulder jolted him out of his thoughts.

“Time to suit up, Rookie.” Whiskey 4 rumbled menacingly. “We’re on the clock now.”

Jerry Baylor nodded mutely and went for his gear, seeing how Whiskey 3 and 4 slipped on their suits and their boots with practiced movements. It took him a lot longer because of his unfamiliarity with the strange fabric.

All the while, he heard the frantic shouts and terrified cries of military personnel on the radio, broken up occasionally by a woman’s authoritative voice. There was no mistaking the solid response that Max Tennyson gave.

“Control, this is Whiskey 1. We’re 20 miles out and Oscar-Mike.”

***

_ Minuteman Silo November-84, Undisclosed Location _

_ North Dakota _

_ March 9th, 1979 C.E. _

_ 10:34 P.M. _

Everyone had been on edge and keyed up when they finished the drive. The last leg of it had taken them off paved roads and onto graded gravel and dirt paths covered in mud and slush that should have trapped them in the muck and left them stranded. The ‘Mobile Command Center’ however, hardly seemed to notice the rough roads. Any time that there was even a moment that the Rookie felt they were going to get stuck, there was a hard jolt from the undercarriage that knocked them loose and kept them moving forward. 

Once they got closer to the missile silo out in the middle of nowhere after the terrified reports went silent, Baylor wasn’t thinking about the condition of the roads or how his suit still didn’t feel like it was sitting right. He wasn’t thinking about anything aside from the long-barreled gun he’d assembled under Whiskey 4’s brusque instruction and what he could see through the front windows of the RV as they barreled through the chain link fence around the facility. There was an enormous shape looming over the silo in the night sky, lit up by a few scarce lights at its wingtips and mostly by the hazy glow of the fires burning underneath it. Ramming the fence jolted them a little, but there wasn’t a good alternative. The burning wreckage of a car scattered over what was left of the gated entrance had made it impassable.

“Wes, take the wheel.” Colonel Tennyson said from the front, slamming his helmet down into place and reaching for the door handle.  _ “Whiskey 3, 4, and 5, deploy!” _ He shouted over the suit’s radio and then he was shoving the door open and jumping out the side.

That much was ingrained into Baylor’s mind, so when Whiskey 3 and 4 shoved the side door open and jumped out with their weapons, he was right behind them. The RV sped along as they hit the ground in a modified tuck and roll around their gear, leaving them behind to swerve for the main objective. 

_ “Whiskey Team, comms check.” _ Colonel Tennyson said crisply. 

_ “Whiskey 2, driving.” _

_ “Whiskey 3, Oscar-Mike.” _

_ “Whiskey 4, loaded for bear.” _

_ “Whiskey 5, all green.” _ Baylor answered. He was already sweeping the battlefield and cringing at what he saw. There wasn’t a guard tower or a hangar, or any sort of defensive weaponry. There was, aside from the burning timbers of a small shack and a blown-open metal hatch that seemed to be close to two feet thick, nothing that had been previously standing which would indicate it was anything more than a concrete patch and an old hut in the middle of nowhere that used to have some kind of a telephone pole nearby. More importantly, there was nothing around that he could use to gain some elevation, something drilled into him in Sniper School. Also, there wasn’t a scrap of cover to be found, another problem. 

It didn’t matter. They still had a job to do. 

_ “Whiskey 5, check that silo on our nine o’clock. Whiskey 3 and 4, on the bogey. Weapons hot.” _

Baylor ran for the massive metal silo hatch that had been twisted up and wrenched out of the ground. He had about a second and a half to wonder and worry about what kind of force could do something like that before he had to slow at the edge. He peered down into the gaping chasm lined with red emergency lights and stared at the absence of the thing it was designed to hold, hearing the sound of strange weapons fire behind him all the while. There was a trick to getting the communicators in his Plumbers combat suit to turn on and off but he hadn’t figured it out yet. He’d left his radio’s microphone to ‘always on’ when he suited up, so it was just a matter of talking. “Whiskey 5, the silo’s empty. Did the missile get fired?

_ “Negative.” _ Colonel Tennyson answered him.  _ “Which means the UFO took it.” _

_ “There are two of them, Colonel.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Two UFO’s.” _ Wes clarified, speaking from inside the RV which was spinning towards the lone object hovering over the site.  _ “I am tracking a second object 10,000 feet up and accelerating away. Just drove by a second silo torn open as well.” _

That one was probably empty also, and Baylor unslung his long gun, taking aim at the one UFO he could still see. Whiskey 1 and Whiskey 3 and 4 were already unleashing hell on it with incandescent bursts of light and bolts of glowing blue energy, but none of it seemed to do much to affect the ship that kept hovering with impunity. Then the roof of the RV split open and a mounted turret popped up not far from the mess of radio dishes and antennae along the back. When it opened fire on the UFO, those laser blasts burned blue-white and filled the air with percussive thunder. The impacts caused the thing to shudder. The laser shots burned through the hull of the ship, and Baylor dialed in his scope on the impact site, noting the telltale red glow of melted metal around the edges of the hits. He steadied his breathing, took aim, and fired. So did everyone else on the squad.

Whatever was flying the UFO must have thought itself impervious to their weapons, and until the RV had opened up, that had been true. By the time it finally registered the danger and started to move to retreat, they’d cratered its underbelly with half a dozen holes and unleashed their small arms fire into them, doing worse besides. Baylor couldn’t fire nearly as fast as his team leader or Whiskey 3 with their laser rifles, or with as much damaging punishment as the chambered plasmabursts from the heavy ion cannon that Whiskey 4 was carrying, but he made up for it with the sheer penetrating power of his sniper laser. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that it might have been his last shot at the thing’s tail section, right on a glowing port just beneath the equatorial edge of the saucer, that did it in. The thing shuddered, the few lights on it gave out as an explosion from its back end sent a gush of orange flame and smoke into the air, and it dipped down and careened for the far end of the missile site. The sound it made when it slammed into the snow-covered concrete and the muddy ground just beyond it was horrendous, and the whoops of joy from the rest of the team just barely made it tolerable.

_ “Don’t celebrate just yet, team.” _ Whiskey 1 admonished them.  _ “Whiskey 2, keep the cannon pointed at the wreckage. Whiskey 3 and 5, I want you looking for survivors. Whiskey 4 with me, we need to have a look at this thing. Any radiation readings, Wes?” _

_ “Geiger Counter says about 13 millisieverts. Not lethal but above average, worst of it’s from the crash. Long as we stay in our suits, we’ll be fine.” _

Baylor had his orders, so he hoofed it for the wreckage of the shack and flung it aside, unbothered by the heat and flames in his gray suit. As he flung one chunk of charred wood after another aside, he finally saw what he’d been looking for - the ruins of a service elevator that had been torn to pieces. The cabling had been snapped clean off and looking down the shaft revealed a hazy interior with sick yellow lighting.

_ “Whiskey 5 here, I’ve got eyes on the main entrance and it’s totaled. I might be able to make it down with some rappelling gear…” _

_ “Everyone, eyes up!”  _ Colonel Tennyson cut him off sharply, and there was a note of urgency that wasn’t quite terror in his voice. The Rookie had known Whiskey 1 all of three days now and he didn’t think the man had it in him to ever panic.  _ “We’ve got movement from inside of the wreckage!” _

Baylor turned away from his last objective and instinctively brought his long-barreled laser rifle up, tucking the stock against his shoulder. It had a fair amount of kick to it that was a little less than the M40, and he was still adjusting to it. 

Through the scope that he had jammed up as close to his helmet as he could manage, the Rookie could make out something bulging the roof of the downed UFO up and out. Like there was a creature inside pounding at the alien metal trying to break free of it. In the firelight it took on a menacing quality, and that was even before the loud hammerblow thuds of it rattled his heart.

Then like a bird hatching from an egg, a massive, sharp-edged limb tore the metal apart and smashed out of it. That was followed soon after by a second, and then a third and a fourth widened the breach until it was large enough for the body those spiderlike legs were attached to. 

The robot was metallic and painted a burnished, dried-blood red. Its head was a rotating cylinder bristling with guns and gleaming glass eyes. It took one sweep of the battlefield, passing over the four figures on the ground that opened fire on it instinctively and immediately turned its attention to the RV nearby.

The side of its body parted and a rack with missiles slid out into play. A pair of those warheads fired off and screamed towards it, and the Rookie heard Whiskey 1 scream Whiskey 2’s name right before they slammed into the ground right next to its side and detonated. The explosion lifted the RV clean off the ground and into the air by ten feet before it crashed down onto its side, the paint job warped and smoking and the turret pointed helplessly away from the robot.

_ “Take it down!” _ Max shouted, increasing the rate of his shots as the robot turned towards him. It angled two legs at him and stabbed down, trying to spear him like a bug collector mounting a wasp on a pin, but Max rolled clear and kept shooting as it pursued.

_ “Too close, can’t get a clean shot!” _

_ “Take the shot, Phil!” _

_ “Boss, you’re right…” _

_ “TAKE THE SHOT!” _ Max screamed at him. There was a delay and the ominous whining sound of Whiskey 4’s ion cannon charging up even more. Then a thunderous boom came when the plasma grenade was released and slammed into the side of the robot, detonating in blinding white light. The red robot went flying through the air even farther than the RV had and hit the ground in a heap thirty feet away. Baylor stared through his scope, stunned to see that Whiskey 1 had somehow gotten clear of the explosion at the last instant and was struggling to pick himself back up again. The legs of the robot must have  _ just _ missed him.

_ “Whiskey 2, report.” _

_ “Whiskey 2 here...shaken up, but alive.” _ Came the reply from Wes Green, who groaned afterwards.  _ “I’ll need some aspirin after this, Max.” _

_ “Tell me my ride’s okay and I’ll buy you the whole pharmacy.” _ Max joked, earning a weak and pained laugh from his second in command.  _ “Phil, Coop, Rookie, sitrep?” _

_ “All good here, boss.” _

_ “No damage.” _

Baylor moved his scope from the Colonel to the smoking robot on the ground and dialed in his scope. “Whiskey 5 is green.” He said, and stared at the heap of alien-forged metal. It looked battered, but even with the punishment that Whiskey 4’s charged cannon shot had smashed it with, it was remarkably intact. What the hell was it made of? And was it even down for the count?

Maybe it was paranoia run amok, but he refused to ease his concentration off of it. When the light in its mechanical eyes glowed back to life and it started to stir, he didn’t bother shouting out a warning. He just centered the scope between the thing’s eyes, marveled at how he didn’t have to account for windage or dropdown all that much, waited between heartbeats…

And bored a hole through the thing’s skull before it could do anything more than shudder as it tried to move its legs underneath it. The effect of the killshot was immediate. The eyes went dark and it lost all power, dropping back to the ground under the full control of gravity and momentum.

There was silence on the line for several seconds as the rest of the squad recovered from their shock and put it together. 

_ “Did the Rookie make that shot?” _ Whiskey 4 asked wonderingly.

“That was me.” Baylor replied coolly, finally safetying his weapon and lowering the barrel back down. 

_ “Good shooting, Whiskey 5.” _ Colonel Tennyson said, all business again, and there was a click on the line as he switched from their team’s private channel to the main Plumbers frequency.  _ “Whiskey 1 to Control. We’ve got a downed UFO at Installation November 84, a second UFO that broke atmosphere before we could intercept it, and some kind of red four-legged robot that put up one hell of a fight before we took it down.” _

**_“Control confirms, Whiskey 1. Merlin instructs you to Secure and Contain and search for survivors. A cleanup team is enroute, ETA 30 minutes.”_ **

_ “Roger that, Avalon.” _ The radio clicked again as Colonel Tennyson switched their channel back to team private, and he didn’t lose a step.  _ “Okay, team. Phil, Coop, help Wes get our ride back on its wheels and then take a look at that robot. It took a hell of a lot of punishment and I want to know who sent it. Whiskey 5, you’re with me. If the main shaft is down we’ll have to look for the secondary access, and we need to know if there are any survivors left here.” _

Whiskey 1 got a series of affirmatives in response and the other two raced for the RV lying on its side. The Colonel walked straight for Baylor who came to attention automatically. It made the older Plumber chuckle a little.

_ “At ease, Rookie. I’m not big on formality in my unit, just results. That was one hell of a shot. How did you know it wasn’t down for the count?” _

“I didn’t.” Baylor confessed. “I think it was just nerves.”

_ “Nerves, huh?” _ Max muttered, patting him on the elbow and walking past him.  _ “Just be sure you don’t have that thing pointed at one of us the next time you’re feeling nervous.” _

“Yes, sir. Erm. No, sir.” Baylor quickly replied. “Sir, what the hell is an alien robot doing stealing nuclear missiles?”

_ “That’s the 64,000 dollar question, Rookie.” _ Max answered grimly.

***

_ 12:21 A.M. _

  
  


It was called the ‘Mobile Command Center’ for a reason, and that became abundantly clear when the team sat or stood around the kitchen table, nursing glasses of water while a medic from the cleanup crew gave them all a shot. No needles, just the press of a strange device that resembled a stubby-nosed otoscope on the side of their necks once their helmets were off and they didn’t have to worry about radiation sickness. No iodine tablets in water needed, and he even felt energized after, like he’d had three cups of coffee and he’d had ten hours to heal the bruises. It reminded the Rookie a little of the shot they’d given him back during his brief orientation, but that one hadn’t done anything except allow him to understand nearly everything anyone said, regardless of language. He just wished he knew why some people speaking made him think of food.

The heavily modified GMC Motorhome had taken some abuse at the hands of the robot’s missiles and being knocked on its side, but less than Baylor would have thought. Aside from Wes Green drinking herbal tea and being constantly prodded by his superior in case of concussion, the worst damage had been a lot of broken dishes and spilled beverages in the refrigerator. Easily swept up, mopped up, and forgotten about. 

Max had laid out a paper map of the United States with old fold and crease lines marring the image on the dining table, and they all clustered around it while the speakers in the kitchen piped in the Plumber’s radio chatter.

_ “ - No other sites were hit, just November 84 -” _

_“Tranquility Base here, no sign of your missing bogey from our vantage point…”_

“The two survivors we found got carted off by the cleanup crews.” Colonel Tennyson said, giving a nod to another fully-suited Plumber who took two steps into the RV from the side door, saluted, and handed over a folded note. Max took it and read it out loud. “The wounds on the other five bodies were consistent with high-energy weapons discharge, stab wounds and laceration, and blunt force trauma. It’ll take the reconstruction teams a while to piece together what happened, but if I had to guess, the big robot we fought against had some little X-Ray brothers and sisters that got into the base.”

“Isn’t that a lovely thought.” Wes groused, putting a second bag of frozen peas against the side of his head and the still swelling lump there, with the first thawed one tossed over into the sink. “How many missiles were on this base, Max?”

Max shook his head. “If it’s standard to other Minuteman bases, about two to four. They usually have the command center centrally located as a hub with the silos spaced out away from them in a circle. Avalon’s going to have to play cleanup with the folks at NORAD, and I don’t imagine that SAC in Offutt will be all that happy with this.”

“When those blue-suits wanna come out here and try doing our job I’ll pretend to give a shit.” Billings scoffed, taking another sip of his beer. 

_ “ -Whiskey 1, Merlin requests an upda -” _ Control said, but Wes Green’s hand snapped up like a rattlesnake and cranked the knob down until the speakers turned off. 

“Thanks, Wes.” Max exhaled wearily, putting a thumb and two fingers against his forehead, rubbing at it steadily. “They’ll be dragging the UFO back to Area 51 for study, the robot’s another matter. Chances are good that’ll get carted off to Fort Tesla or Rushmore Base for examination or study, and my guess is Tesla. They’ve got that new Electron Microscope and I’m  _ sure _ the tech squad is salivating over the metallurgy. Son of a bitch took a hit from your ion cannon and was trying to get back up, Phil.” He opened his eyes enough to give Whiskey 4 a wan smile. “Good thing the Rookie’s a sureshot.”

“I softened it up for him.” Phil argued, defending himself, and that just made Whiskey 3 laugh a little more honestly as he poured a shot of whiskey in his own glass of beer for a boilermaker. The Rookie just shrugged. He’d just been following orders. The threat got put down, the rest was just details.

Cooper drained half of his boilermaker down in a few steady swallows and set the glass down firmly, but gently on the table. They didn’t have nearly as many glasses or bowls and plates after the RV got up-ended to waste on dramatics. “Permission to speak -”

“Say what you need to, Coop.” Tennyson cut him off. Whiskey 3 blinked once and then allowed himself to frown.

“That was a fuckin’ shitshow, and we only nailed the diversion. You know it, boss. There was a second UFO that got off clean, there weren’t any missiles we pulled out of that saucer we took down.”

“Yeah.” Max nodded. “It got away clean, escaped Earth’s atmosphere, and it could be halfway across the galaxy in a couple of days.”

“So what are we gonna do about it?” Coop pressed him.

“Regs say that our jurisdiction ends past the orbit of the Moon, Coop. You know that.”

“Screw the regs.” Phil blustered angrily. “Whoever’s responsible for this raid, for the robots, they’ve been snooping around for close to 20 years now. They just kicked our teeth in, boss. You don’t let something like that go.”

Whiskey 2 entered into the conversation as a voice of composure and calm. “In this situation, standing policy is that it’s up to Avalon. It’s Merlin’s final decision whether or not to reach out to Galactic Enforcers to request extraterrestrial aid and intervention.”

“Which they won’t do.” Cooper argued. “Hell, Avalon’s keeping them in the  _ dark _ about the Sludgepuppy Wars, remember? Because the higher-ups don’t want them  _ interfering _ in a local matter. You think they’re gonna go begging for help now?”

Whiskey 1, Max Tennyson, slumped a little at the accusation in his subordinate’s bitter arguments. “No, they probably won’t.” He conceded, and went back to rubbing at his forehead. “It’s no big secret that the Galactic Enforcers have never been fond of humanity’s development of nuclear weaponry. Their demands for disarmament were what killed the talks in ‘52. The old man would never authorize a request for aid on this. Better to lose the missiles than lose face.”

Jerry Baylor bristled at the notion. Yes, he’d had chains of command and following orders beaten into him hard until it was second nature, but this - this was too big. It was too much to just gloss over.

Years this had been going on. Years. And now there were fatalities, stolen missiles, the kinds of things that if humans had done them would lead to a firing squad and an international incident unlike anything ever before. 

Max dropped his hand down and looked around the table, and Whiskey 5 found himself doing the same. In the eyes of his new team, he could see burning anger, resolve, and a question.

_ What are we going to do about it? _

Whatever Max was looking for in their faces, he must have found. Permission or agreement, there was too much in the eyes of Whiskey Team for Jerry Baylor to parse out entirely. Colonel Tennyson let out a loud huff of air and pushed himself off of the end of the table. “I guess I’d better make a call, then.” 

Whiskey 5 blinked wonderingly and his confusion was something that Whiskey 4 shared also, because Billings spoke up when Max had meandered to the front of the RV and started twisting the dials on the communications gear in a new sequence. “Uh, Wes? Who’s the boss calling?”

Wes Green chuckled and drained the rest of his now lukewarm tea in one go. “That’s right, you weren’t with us the last time he _ made a call. _ Let’s just say that Max Tennyson’s a legend, and he’s got friends in high places.”

Jerry Baylor turned his shoulders around and craned his neck to see Max grinning as he slipped on a bulky set of headphones and put the jack into an auxiliary port on the dash. The Colonel was still tired, but something in his eyes glowed when he spoke.

“Hey there, beautiful. You have ears on tonight? Roswell needs a favor…”

***

_ Turtle Mountain State Forest, North Dakota _

_ March 10th, 1979 C.E. _

_ 7:31 P.M. _

  
  


Nobody said anything else that night after Whiskey 1 finished his call to whoever his friend ‘in high places’ was and Wes wearily told them all to finish their drinks and sack out. Shedding their uniforms and bedding down, they woke up in the morning to the sound of someone at the stove. It was always one of the best sounds Baylor ever heard just because it meant more than another C-Ration that tasted like chemicals and rust. Or worse, like the floor he was lying on. At least the couch was folded back up. Now he almost had enough room to roll over. 

All of which made the groaned, “Damn it, Phil, I told you to set the alarm,” that came from the bottom bunk across from him sound all the worse. 

“Why?” Baylor asked as Max and Wes’s whispered voices filtered back through the curtain, and even the Native American sounded like someone pissed in his Cheerios. 

“Because the colonel made it to the stove first,” the blond man muttered as he dropped down from the bunk above Phil. 

Phil just hid his head under his pillow. “Rookie gets first bite. If he can keep it down, come and get me.” 

A lifetime of eating on the rough made Baylor snort at that as he pushed himself out of the sleeping bag that the colonel had pulled out of  _ somewhere  _ last night. “We’re getting a warm meal and you two are complaining? It's a good thing that you’re here, because neither of you would have lasted five minutes as Jarheads.” 

It was an attitude that lasted until he saw the goat cheese and squid omelet that the Colonel plopped down on his plate. It was a mix that would have made Chesty Puller gag just from the smell, but it went down better than the side-eye he got from everyone but the Colonel. Tennyson was the only one who wolfed the food down with a grin as he cheerfully told them the news that they’d be patrolling the other missile sites around North Dakota, which would keep Avalon off their backs as they killed time until his ‘friend’ arrived later in the evening.

They made camp in a large clearing beside a small lake, and despite the park being closed, they had no trouble getting in. Wes Green used a laser pistol to burn a sizable hole in the ice next to the shore and they took turns fishing, coming up with some trout for their evening meal.

In spite of the cold, they sat around an enormous bonfire that blazed brightly in the growing darkness, relaxing in a way that felt almost unnatural to Baylor after the hellish firefight the evening before. Cooper had pulled out a harmonica from somewhere and puffed on it to produce a low and crooning melody that mimicked one of the songs Max had played on his 8-Tracks during the days’ drive. Phil was cleaning up the cast iron skillet that they’d used for the fish earlier, Wes tended the fire, and the Colonel sat on the ground with his legs stretched out in front of him. Tennyson leaned back against a fallen log with his arms behind his head and smiled as he stared up at the stars. 

“What are you smiling about?” Phil finally asked. 

Max gestured at the night sky, and the crescent moon broaching on half-full. “How often do you stop and look up at those stars, Phil?” He countered the Plumber’s question with another question.

“Not often.” The man grunted. “Stars don’t pay for my new set of wheels.”

“Well, you ought to.” Max grumbled. “It’s easy to get caught up in our problems down here. It’s easy to forget that our world’s just a small part of something bigger. I look up at the sky to remind myself why I do this.”

“Is the rest of the universe better than here?” Baylor asked him, and Max turned his head over slightly.

“Bigger. Better?” The Colonel shrugged. “Couldn’t say. There’s as many problems out there as there are here, so I’ve been told. We just try to keep our own little corner of the universe safe, Rookie.”

“You all should listen. He knows more about this corner than most,” Green said conversationally as he poked at the fire. “He could have commanded Apollo 11, you know.” and Baylor and Whiskey 4 both whipped their heads over to Whiskey 2 in surprise before doing a double-take to Max. “Really. He passed it up to become a Plumber.”

“I ought to stop telling you things, Wesley.” Max grumbled. “You pick the worst times to remember them.”

“You could’ve walked on the Moon.” Baylor stammered out.

“I did three months ago, during a routine check-up on the staff at Tranquility Base.” Max replied easily. “And you’ll be heading there yourself after you finish your tour with us.”

“If he survives it.” Phil muttered, earning a dark look from the Colonel and Whiskey 2.

“We all knew the risks when we signed on, Phil.” Max said warningly. “I took the job because it meant I could protect the people I cared about. It’s why most of us did. Maybe not you…” Phil smirked and shrugged his shoulders, then surrendered to Max’s logic and looked up at the sky. They all did then.

Maybe if Baylor hadn’t been staring up in a different patch of sky than everyone, he wouldn’t have noticed it. There was a spot in the sky where there should have been stars and there weren’t. If they’d been in a city or somewhere that had loads more light pollution beyond their bonfire, he could have missed it completely. Or if he hadn’t been hyper-aware of objects in the sky after their fight the night before…

Regardless, he saw it, and then he couldn’t  _ not _ see it. A ship was gliding in silently towards them, a dark spot in the sky that got bigger and bigger. He swallowed and pointed. “Colonel? Sir? We’ve got company.”

They all looked over and followed his finger, and then Phil swore and lurched to his feet. “Fuck, another one. Get to the RV!”

“Stand down, Whiskey 4!” Max bellowed, and the thunder in his voice was enough to make everything come to a halt. Wes had looked tense for a bit, but he relaxed when he heard that command.

“Is that…”

“She always did love to make an entrance.” Max said in reply, smiling as he pushed himself up off of the ground. “Relax, everyone. This one’s friendly.”

“How do you know that, sir?” Whiskey 5 asked carefully.

“If she wasn’t, that ship would be coming in shooting.” Max explained, dusting his hands off on his pant legs and standing by the fire. The dark shape in the night came down and settled in a silent hover over the lake, and then a figure glowing in purple light appeared off of its side, flying down and across the lake towards them.

It was undeniably alien. The creature was wrapped in a tight skinsuit with two long tentacles that grew out of the sides of its head and hung down behind its back like hair, its skin green and slightly scaled, and a third eye in its forehead. Yet for all of that, Jerry found himself swallowing and standing up a little straighter, because the figure that flew in an aura of strange light was undeniably feminine, and when she finally got close enough to see their faces, she looked past them all to the Colonel and smiled.

“Hey there, Roswell.” She greeted them, and  _ nope, _ Jerry was not going to ask why there was a purr in her voice when she said that. 

“Xylene.” Max said, stepping past the rest of the team to go over in front of her as she settled down the last few inches until she settled on the ground and the glow around her faded. The smile on his face hadn’t been that genuine in a long while. “Thanks for coming.”

“Well, it must have been pretty important if my favorite Plumber was willing to make a transmission on the Hyperwave circuit I gave you for emergencies.” Xylene said, tipping her head back a little to look into his eyes. She was about a head shorter than the Colonel and seemed pleased by that truth. He laughed and pulled her into a hug that she readily returned with a kiss on the cheek for his troubles, then the alien looked past him, finally recognizing the others. “Wesley Green. You keeping Tennyson here out of trouble?”

“When he lets me.” Wes said, getting a laugh from the alien woman that was nothing short of sparkling. After she finished, the Navajo bowed his head. “It’s good to see you again, Magister.”

“Same.” She looked to the others. “Cooper, I know...who’re the other two?”

“Phil’s our new fourth, been with us for a while. And this here’s Baylor, the Rookie.” Xylene gave them both a polite nod before turning to Max again. 

“So, astronaut. What’s so important that you’d ask me to fly a few dozen light-years over at full speed, when the official channel from the Plumbers to the Galactic Enforcers is quiet?”

“Because I don’t think our boss wanted your bosses knowing what was going on.” Max said, all business again. “Me, I want the problem dealt with, and I need off-world help to make it happen.” He motioned with his head. “Come on inside the RV. I’ve got some video footage from our last mission you need to look at.”

“Oh, so we’re watching movies now?” Xylene crooned as she took his arm, sauntering beside him as they walked past the rest of the Plumbers with a deliberate sway to her hips that went all the way down to the tip of her tail. “I hope you have snacks. Isn’t that how you humans do it here on Earth?”

“I’ve got some chocolate covered crickets in the freezer.” Max volunteered, and she laughed again.

“Oh, Max. You know just what a girl likes…”

Everyone else on the squad was silent as Max escorted Xylene into the trailer, and Baylor might well have continued to say nothing and stand rigidly as a statue if Wes Green hadn’t looked over and snorted at him.

“Tongue in your mouth, Rookie.” Wes said, the words having too much bass to be a whisper even if it didn’t hide the laugh in it. “That’s a  _ lady. _ And she’s spoken for.”

“Funny.” Cooper muttered, forcing his legs into action and moving to follow the Colonel and their alien visitor. “So’s he.”

***

Xylene was a Magister with the Galactic Enforcers, a rank that allowed her greater autonomy. Or so Jerry Baylor was told. She was his first alien and he’d thought that she spoke English up until they got inside and Max showed her the first of their color-image recordings, and she hissed something that was nothing but a garbled mess to him. That was enough of a disconnect for him to recall the ‘translator microbes’ that he’d been injected with, and then he felt stupid for a few more seconds. Nobody else noticed, though. The attention of the rest of the team was on Xylene, who frowned at the drone that crawled out of the downed saucer.

“This is so familiar.” She said to herself, munching on one of the chocolate-covered crickets Max had given her. “You didn’t find any biologics on board the crashed saucer afterwards?”

“Negative. No X-Rays. Just that big robot.” Wes told her.

“Drone.” Xylene corrected the Navajo. “Four legs...any flight capabilities?”

“Not that it showed.” Max said, shaking his head. “We’re pretty sure that it wasn’t alone, though. Our cleanup crews think that there were smaller ones that got into the command and control section of the missile base, those ones might have been able to. They left a hell of a mess behind them. Why? What are you thinking, Xylene?”

“That I should know this.” The alien woman told them heatedly. She huffed and brought up the strange gauntlet strapped to her forearm, turning it on, and a projected screen manifested in thin air above it. With careful and deliberate gestures of her free hand, she scrolled the image full of some kind of green alien script between different pages that were accompanied by wire-frame outlines of models of robots, with all three of her eyes moving between Max’s recording of the previous evening’s fight and her own device’s projection. “Mounted pulse lasers. Internal seeker missiles, unknown detonation index…” Her three eyes widened when Phil’s charged ion cannon slammed a plasmaburst into its side and sent it flying, smoking but relatively undamaged. “...And some  _ very  _ impressive armor. How did you take it down after that?” She asked, pausing the recording and looking over to Max, sitting just off of her elbow. The Colonel smiled and motioned towards the side door where Baylor was leaning at a respectable distance. “Rookie knows how to shoot straight. Keep watching.”

Xylene restarted the recording and a few seconds later, blinked as the sniper laser bored a hole through its rotating head and dropped it cold. “Wow. That  _ is _ a good shot. Honestly, though, I think you got lucky.” She glanced to her screens which were still sorting through possibilities. “No matches yet, but if I had to guess, that thing could move a lot faster if it wasn’t banged up from the crash of its ship.”

“That’s us all right.” Cooper snorted, grabbing another pair of beers from the RV’s fridge and handing one off to Phil. “We’re all  _ kinds _ of lucky. We drive two days and stumble right into the kind of firefight that makes my Irma keep buying me antacids and telling me to lay off the spicy foods.”

“You don’t  _ eat _ spicy foods, though.” Phil pointed out, popping the top of his beer with a hiss.

“Exactly.” Cooper agreed wearily. 

The gauntlet device Xylene had beeped cheerfully then, and she turned her attention to it. Whatever she was looking at must have been bad. Alien or no, there was no mistaking the sharp intake of breath or the way all three of her eyes widened. Her head tendrils going rigid before shivering was new though.

“Fuck.” Xylene whispered.  _ “Fuck. Fucking…” _ And Baylor wouldn’t have believed it, but her seafoam green skin went even paler then. Max had an arm around her and was holding her close as she panicked, anchoring her.

“Xylene?” Max asked her carefully. “What is it?”

“You said there was a second ship.” She said, licking at her lips before she turned her head to him. Max nodded, calm where she wasn’t.

“Unknown design. We didn’t get a visual on it and radar return was nonspecific. Seeing as we didn’t recover the nuclear missiles on the downed UFO, we figure the second one has them.”

Xylene closed all of her eyes and breathed in and out, very slowly. Baylor figured she was putting herself together again, but the way that Colonel Tennyson and Mr. Green both tensed up spoke of something else. 

“Has anything like this ever happened before?” She asked, her voice calmer than any of the nonverbal signals her body kept giving off. The Plumbers aside from Max all looked to one another, silently asking if they should own up to it or not. Max didn’t hesitate at all.

“UFO sightings around nuclear tests and missile launches have been happening since the late 50’s. It wasn’t until this past decade that thefts started happening.”

“And the Plumbers didn’t think that Galactic Enforcers needed to know about this until now.” 

“Pretty sure our bosses still don’t want Galactic Enforcers knowing about this.” Max told her consolingly.

“You  _ rebklath’n _ humans.” Xylene snarled, jerking herself out of Max’s reach and storming to her feet. “I swear Max, you’re the only one I know with any common sense. We need to go. We need to go  _ now.” _

“Xylene, what is it?” Max demanded, getting up after her as she stormed out of the RV. Baylor and the rest of the team scrambled to chase after the two, and caught up to them outside where Max was almost yelling at her. “Xylene, talk to me!”

She spun around, a purple glow in her eyes, and raised her arm with the strange device strapped to it. “The GE Drone Database got a hit, and you really hit the jackpot this time for trouble. This I have to call in, because you humans are in no way prepared for the storm of trouble that’s headed your way if he’s serious about stealing your fission warheads for his crusade. Grab every piece of heavy weaponry you can carry, it’ll give me time to land my ship.”

Max could move fast when he wanted to, and he was grabbing her wrist right as she went to fly off. Her head spun back around and she bared her teeth at him. It made Baylor’s breath catch in his throat as he realized the exotic alien woman he’d been giving moon eyes to was actually dangerous. To anyone but Max, apparently, because she covered her teeth with her lips right after. 

“Xylene.” Max repeated her name. “Who. Is.  _ He.” _ He asked.

Xylene blinked all three of her eyes simultaneously. Her head tendrils shivered again, and Baylor marked it off in his head as something akin to an expression of fear. The way she spoke afterwards clinched it.

Baylor hadn’t heard a name uttered that fearfully in his life, but Xylene whispered it like it was the Devil himself.

_ “...Vilgax.” _

***

_ Low Earth Orbit _

Xylene had told them to bring all the firepower they could, but had balked when Max insisted on loading up the Mobile Command Center in the back of her spaceship. It was blue and all sleek lines, shaped like a multi-pronged dart with rounded tips and curves that had Baylor thinking about a race car and a beautiful woman at the same time. Her ship was nothing like the geometric simplicity of the saucer that they’d taken down and it didn’t seem boxy and constructed like any airplane he’d ever seen, and it had  _ nothing _ in common with the flying washing machine that NASA had used to take men to the Moon. Xylene had argued their ride wouldn’t fit but Max had gotten out a measuring tape from the toolbox stored in the back for quick repairs and answered, to his own satisfaction, that it could. In reality, the RV ended up just  _ barely _ fitting in the rear storage compartment meant to carry much smaller vehicles or a complement of troops, and whoever drove it in wouldn’t have enough space to even open the door to get out. Max surrendered driving privileges to his second in command, and Wes joked that he’d finally get to listen to some symphonies he’d picked up back in Boise. They set up an intercom connection between Xylene’s ship and the RV to keep in touch, and the rest of the squad minus Whiskey 2 went through her spaceship’s side door, and Baylor met three more aliens right after; a yellow-eyed blue dinosaur in another sleek bodysuit like Xylene’s, a squat pot-bellied alien with an enormous mouth that seemed like a lumpy potato, and a towering red-skinned alien with four arms that made Colonel Tennyson freeze for a moment before he kept on. Whiskey 1 fed him the names of their species after the introductions; Kineceleran, Perk, and Tetramand. And Xylene was an Uxorite. The Galactic Enforcers officers under Xylene’s command all bristled when she told them to make orbit, begin scanning for recent ion exhaust trails and to call command with the news that  _ Vilgax _ had been sniffing around Earth for years stealing nuclear weaponry and that they were only just finding out about it now.

Then she took the four humans away from the bridge into a modestly-sized cabin full of padded chairs and a futuristic white table, sat them down, and told them who they were going up against.  _ What _ they were going up against.

Xylene spun them a tale of an amphibious species whose expansionist vision was spurred on by a tyrant emperor, and a world full of squidlike inhabitants that found their world swallowed and enslaved to that greed. She spoke of an intelligent boy skilled in mechanical engineering who grew up as a slave and became cold and hard very fast, became what his people needed in a leader and a vengeful freedom fighter. She spoke of a desperate call that he and his forces risked everything to make to beg for the help of the Galactic Enforcers, and the crushing bitterness that followed when he was told by an agent that was later censured and dismissed for their callousness that no help was coming. When the boy was told that the Chimera Sui Generis species was on their own in the war against an empire that the Galactic Enforcers couldn’t defeat, and could only push back so far. 

She spoke of atrocity after atrocity committed by Vilgax in the name of his people’s freedom and the slaughter of the Incursean Empire, how he drove such fear into the heart of the ‘Illuminated Emperor’ that the Empire sued for peace and begged Galactic Enforcers to broker the treaty.

Baylor found himself pouring a fresh round of alien alcohol Max declared safe for human consumption when Xylene concluded by explaining how Vilgax refused the peace treaty and walked away from his people and the Galactic Enforcers, becoming a Warlord in truth, and turned into the most feared conqueror in the last two human centuries.

When she fell silent, nobody else around the table was too eager to say anything else and they sipped at their drinks. Baylor took another hit of his, catching strong notes of a licorice flavor that reminded him of the snacks his grandfather always brought around Thanksgiving. Well, maybe the Colonel and his two more experienced squadmates didn’t feel like speaking up, but he did.

“How do you know it’s this Vilgax that’s been coming for us, ma’am?” He asked the Galactic Enforcers officer. “We didn’t run into anyone with octopus tentacles dangling from their chin last night.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Xylene huffed, slugging the rest of her own glass back. “But it was one of his drones that came up as a match on our ship’s database, and Vilgax isn’t in the habit of lending those out to other people, no matter how much they offer for them. That’s the one good thing he does in my opinion. None of us in the GE are too fond of what a group like the Blood Pack or the Black Sun might do with his tech, it’s a nightmare to deal with. But him sending his drones out is  _ completely _ his usual procedure. The way he’s been doing it, though…”

The Uxorite’s head tendrils shivered again, and her three eyes glazed over for a bit before she came back to herself. “He’s always looking for an edge in his one-person war on the Incursean Empire, and he’s never been shy about destroying anyone that got in his way.”

“He’s just one man, how much damage could he…” Phil started to argue.

“Destroying a planet is an afternoon’s work for him when he gets well and truly riled up.” Xylene cut him off bitterly. “The Petrosapiens of Petropia were among our strongest supporters of the GE, and he destroyed their planet outright.” She set her plastic cup down and flashed her teeth. “We never did figure out why he did it, whether he was trying to send us a message, or if he was bored, or if they had something that they refused to give him. What we do know is that they’re, for all intents and purposes, extinct. The surviving Petrosapiens we  _ did _ know about either up and disappeared after, or committed suicide.”

“Fuck.” Cooper breathed heavily. 

“And I thought that him causing a star to go supernova to take out a shipyard was bad.” Max grunted. “All right. Is there any good news here?”

“Yeah.” Xylene agreed after a small pause. “He’s not coming himself yet. He’s been sending his drones, but he’s using standard saucer spacecraft. That means he’s been doing this quietly.”

“For two decades?” Baylor asked, and Xylene nodded.

“The Chimera Sui Generis lifespan is about 400 of your planetary revolutions on average. For him, this is just a midlife crisis. And honestly, I’m not sure how much standard physiology to his species applies to him after all the augmentations he’s gotten over his life. Him doing this quietly means that he’s not committing his full reserves here, our last reports had him chipping away at the fringe of the Incursean neutral zone, slaughtering their colonies. If he got his hands on your fission warheads, then he could really start doing some  _ lasting _ damage.”

“Fallout.” Colonel Tennyson stated flatly. “Like poisoning water wells and salting the fields.” 

“It’s much easier to make a place uninhabitable for thousands of revolutions than to keep coming back and blowing it up over and over again.” Xylene said, and the purple glow in her eyes returned. “Why do you think the Galactic Enforcers outlawed them, Max? It’s because to us, life is precious. And the worlds and moons that can support life are even more so.”

Whiskey 3 and 4 looked to each other and then to the Rookie, but nobody could look at the Colonel who swirled what was left of his licorice-flavored liquor around in his glass carefully.

“We don’t make the laws. We don’t give the orders.” Max said wearily. “We just try to put out the fires and keep our world safe for the people we love.”

Xylene’s bitter attitude softened at that, and her hand reached over, green fingers settling over his and squeezing gently. “Max. I’m not mad at you, okay? I’m frustrated at the situation and everything your people’s leaders have done that’s brought us to this, but I’m not mad at you.”

Max mustered a weak smile. “You’re just saying that because I’m your favorite human.”

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Always.” She said warmly, and the purple gleam in her eyes faded back away again. 

The device on Xylene’s wrist beeped at her, and she hit a button. “Yes?”

_ “Magister, we’ve identified an ion trail one Terran rotation old.” _

“Do you have a course fix?”

_ “...Affirmative. It leads directly to the fourth planet in this system.” _

Max sat up straighter at that. “Mars?” He demanded. “The second UFO flew to Mars?”

“If that’s what you call the fourth planet out from your star, yes.” Xylene nodded, turning back to her wrist communicator. “Set a course, but take us in slowly and keep our sensors at maximum sensitivity for any traps or cue lines. I don’t want to warn that  _ Visacha _ that we’re coming.”

_ “Affirmative, Magister.” _ Her device went silent again and Xylene got up, stretching her arms out. 

“You boys can relax in here. We don’t have a lot of extra space up on the bridge, after all, and I’ve probably got some calls to make. If you want, Max, we can route a communication back to your Plumbers on Earth. Let them know what’s happening.”

“Oh, that’ll be a fun call to make.” Max turned his eyes towards the ceiling. “As if Merlin didn’t have enough reasons to get on my case. He isn’t going to like hearing about this.”

“And here I thought that keeping your world safe was the only thing that mattered to your little band of warriors.” Xylene poked him in the chest with a finger. “Don’t worry about it, Max. I’ll make sure you get home safe and sound.”

“With a note for the principal?” The Colonel suggested dryly, and Xylene snorted and turned around. 

“You humans and your strange sayings. Whatever. Meet me up on the bridge when you’re ready to - what’s the phrase you use - phone home?”

“Thanks, Xylene.” Max Tennyson said, and she waved a hand over her shoulder as she left the room. The door closed behind her automatically, and Max sighed and smiled as he looked out after it.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Whiskey 3 asked, his voice colder than usual.

“Sure, Coop. What’s on your mind?”

“You shouldn’t be flirting with her.” Whiskey 3 glared daggers at their leader. “I can’t believe I have to remind you of that.”

“She’s a friend, Coop.” Max pointed out. “I’ve known her since 1965, trust me, flirting is what she does. It’s innocent.”

“Does she know that you’re a married man? Because that sure as hell didn’t look  _ innocent _ to me.” Cooper insinuated. 

Max stared back at Whiskey 3, unfazed by the accusations. “I don’t care what it looked like to you, Cooper. It’s the truth. I’ve done  _ nothing _ to betray the vows I made to my Starshine.”

Baylor considered that for a moment, and glanced down to Max’s left hand, noting the lack of jewelry on it. “I didn’t know you were married, sir. You’re not wearing a ring.”

Max patted a hand on the chest of his suit, above his heart. “I don’t wear it in the field, Rookie. Too much of a chance it’ll interfere with the suit.”

“Too much of a chance it’ll interfere with  _ something, _ anyways.” Cooper snarked, and Max’s face went red.

Whiskey 1 got to his feet stiffly. “Find something to eat. Get comfortable. I’m not sure how long a trip to Mars will take, but once we land, don’t come begging me for a break. We’re finishing this.”

Colonel Tennyson disappeared out of the break room and Whiskey 4 whistled lowly. “Wow. Awesome job there, Coop. I didn’t think anyone could piss him off that bad.”

“He didn’t yell at me.” Cooper pointed out. “And he didn’t defend himself too hard either. I’d put good money that he’s dipped his wick with Xylene at least once in his life. You two are new, you haven’t been around as much. I brushed it off the first time I met her on a different assignment, we teamed up to stop some human traffickers that were making an end-run on some small villages out in Siberia. She flirted with him then too, but there’s something between them, I just know it. And I hate that he has a wife back home who has no idea he’s got a girl on the side.”

“I don’t think he was lying, though.” Baylor said, and Whiskey 3 and 4 looked at him dubiously. “Honest. I haven’t known Colonel Tennyson or the rest of you that long, but I’ve met other guys like him before. Nothing ever seems to get to them, but when they get too quiet, that’s when you know you’re in trouble. That’s when they started throwing punches and laying out entire barrooms.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rookie.” Phil snorted. “She might be an alien, but if I had a piece that liked me that much, you bet I’d be giving it to her on a regular basis. Marriage is for chumps, anyways. What did James Dean say? Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.”

“Do me a favor and don’t live up to that motto on this mission.” Cooper snapped at his teammate. “Being the first man to die on Mars is an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records we can all do without.”

Baylor blinked at that thought and then poured himself another shot of alien liquor. In the heated exchange between Colonel Tennyson and Cooper, he’d almost forgotten.

They were going to Mars.

**Whiskey Team Will Return in**

**Chapter Two: For All Mankind**


	2. For All Mankind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the company of Xylene and her troop of Galactic Enforcers, Whiskey Team travels to Mars in search of the stolen nuclear missiles and the robotic forces of Vilgax that stole them. And the Rookie Whiskey 5 hopes to live through it...

**_Little Moment: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot_ **

By Eric ‘Erico’ Lawson and Shadows59

* * *

**Chapter Two: For All Mankind**

_ Just Outside Aurorae Sinus, Southern Hemisphere _

_ The Planet Mars _

_ March 11th, 1979 C.E. _

_ 10:14 A.M. _

  
  


Baylor remembered the unmanned probes that NASA had sent to explore Mars not so very long ago. The Mariner probes at the start of the decade, the Viking Landers in 1976. About the only thing he really remembered about them was that they confirmed the presence of ice at the poles and people called in to complain when the Special News Bulletin about the Viking Lander touching down on Mars interfered with their favorite television program.

All of that didn’t really do it justice, and the speed at which Xylene’s ship had taken them from Earth to the red planet was frankly mind-boggling. But then, she’d gotten from wherever she was to Earth in...a day? 

In orbit around the world named for the god of war, Xylene’s team had traced the ion trail of the second UFO’s drive engines down to the southern hemisphere.  _ “That’s a fault with the Exigency Class ships,” _ The Kineceleran had speedily bragged.  _ “You don’t keep up with the engine maintenance, they leak emissions all over the place. But most crews don’t, because it’s expensive and the leak doesn’t hurt performance all that much. Just makes it easier for us to track.” _

The ship had put down into a depression that was hidden in slowly retreating shadows, and using the passive sensors of Xylene’s ship, they had managed to locate it sitting on the surface with a handful of other similar vessels. A few bulky transports with large storage spaces, but there was a second saucer like the one they’d downed at November-84 parked there as well. There wasn’t a sensor net that they could detect in orbit, but they erred on the side of caution, drifting with the thrusters cold and the ship buttoned up tight until they were on the far side of the planet before starting everything back up. They descended fast and skimmed over the planet’s surface, putting down a fair hike away from the base.

Baylor was on pins and needles, and only the relative calm of his teammates kept him sane. He was in space. He was in an  _ alien ship. _ Talking with  _ aliens. _ And he was on  _ Mars. _

“Tell me something, Max. Is that heap on wheels you brought along even  _ rated _ for vacuum?” Xylene asked Max as they suited up in the airlock adjoining her ship’s side door.

“Hey, she may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts.” Max argued. “It may not have hard seals, but we’ve got our suits and those are rated for hard vacuum.”

_ “Oh, good. I suppose this is a bad time to tell you that the water tank froze?” _ Wes Green volunteered dryly over their ship-to-RV radio connection. Max made a face before he slipped on his helmet and sealed himself into his suit with a hiss of pressurized air. 

_ “Just tell me that the important stuff is still working, Wes.” _

_ “Oh, you mean like the engine and the weapons and…” _ Whiskey 2 said with a laugh.

_ “Yeah, all of that. Would be kind of important.” _

_ “Yeah. I switched over to the Tritium converter right after Xylene sealed me up in here. I didn’t think she was keen on choking on exhaust fumes the entire trip, and it’s not like there’s oxygen out there to use.” _

_ “Not enough to breathe, anyways.” _ Max agreed. Baylor heard the Colonel sigh inside his helmet and stand straight.  _ “Whiskey Team, check in.” _

_ “Whiskey 2, I’ve got it in neutral and waiting for deployment.” _

_ “Whiskey 3. Suit is good.” _

_ “Whiskey 4. Let’s get mean and make some green.” _

“Whiskey 5.” Baylor said, swallowing hard after. “Ready as I’m going to be.”

Xylene slipped on her own helmet after curling her head tendrils up so they would fit inside of it. Once the seal was set, she lifted the cover from the airlock depressurization switch and punched it in as purple light bled to life around her. There was a hissing sound as the precious nitrogen-oxygen-helium blend that had been on the ship was sucked away, and then the outer door slipped open. The alien landscape of the Martian surface waited for them on the other side, a desert that wouldn’t have been out of place in Arizona coated in sun-bleached rock and asteroid-cracked crags. Phil started to move forward, but a purple energy field appeared around him and held him fast. Xylene raised a gloved hand and gently wagged a finger at Whiskey 4.  _ “Uh-uh, new guy. Max goes first. He needs this.” _

Colonel Tennyson shifted from one foot to the other, his laser rifle slung over his shoulder and his gloved hands clenching and unclenching.  _ “Right.”  _ He muttered.  _ “Not the first alien world you’ve ever stepped on, Max. It’s just...Mars.” _

That was when it hit Baylor why this might have mattered so much to Max Tennyson. He’d been primed for NASA back when he’d gotten recruited. He’d been on the shortlist of candidates for Apollo 11. He could have walked on the Moon. But he hadn’t. He’d walked away from it so he could protect the world he loved, and the people on it. Did he have kids with the wife that Cooper had mentioned? If he did…It would make sense why he’d given up the Moon to do this. It was a chance to keep them safe. 

Max took two more audible breaths, then walked out and stepped down from the ship onto the red soil. Whiskey 3 and 4 crowded forward along with the Rookie into the doorway after him and watched as Max took another step forward and looked all around.

**_That’s one small step for man,_ ** the now famous quote echoed in Baylor’s head. Undoubtedly, it was in the Colonel’s mind as well. What would he say, as the first human to step foot on the Martial soil?

_ “Welp. We’re here.” _ Max said, and Baylor blinked. Then Whiskey 2, 3, and 4 all started chuckling or laughing outright.

_ “Oh, you are so full of shit, boss.” _ Whiskey 4 cackled, shaking his helmet incredulously. Max turned back towards them and though they couldn’t see his face, Baylor knew he was grinning.

_ “All right, Xylene. Open up the back hatch and let Wes out. Let’s go for a drive. Anyone else on your team coming with us?” _

_ “No, it’s just us. They’ll stay with the ship, fly in and save us if things get dicey.” _

The team piled out and walked towards the back of the spaceship on alien dust. Baylor tried to remember all of his training and keep his mind on the mission as Coop and Phil guided the RV out of the back of the alien spaceship, and Wes stared back through the other side of a windshield that was already stained with dust. Baylor couldn’t help looking back at all of the footprints they were leaving behind.  _ Their  _ footprints.  _ His  _ footprints. 

_ He was walking on another planet.  _

That thought left his mouth dry as the dust that surrounded them as he stared at the dunes and the mountains he saw in the distance, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. And it wasn’t just because it seemed impossible.. 

“I thought it would be redder.” The words were barely a whisper and just a thought. Something that Baylor could wrap his head around as he stared at the tan landscape and wisps of clouds in the almost blue sky. The setting sun looked too small and there weren’t any of the plants hiding that he’d seen in his desert training, but besides that... “It doesn’t…” 

“ _ It looks like home,”  _ Wes Green’s voice cut in. For once there was more than steel and reserve in that voice. And he could tell just from the tone that the Colonel wasn’t the only one with someone waiting for them. Even Xylene stilled at the words and for a crazy moment Baylor almost looked up for the little blue star he wasn’t sure he could see, even with his scope. Then the man took a breath. “ _ And good hunting grounds.”  _

“ _ Here’s hoping,”  _ Whiskey 1 murmured as the rest of them started moving again. Baylor followed Whiskey 3 through the side door of the RV just as Whiskey 4 said,  _ “You know, Max, there’s one good thing about driving this heap in a place with no real atmosphere.” _

_ “What’s that, Phil?”  _ Whiskey 1 asked him as the team and Xylene all hopped inside the RV. Once they were secured with their weapons and gear, Wes shoved it into gear and took off like a shot, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust in their wake.

_ “We can’t listen to your 8-Track collection.” _

***

There was quiet over their radios aside from light chatter, and Whiskey 5 was glad that Whiskey 3 had taken pity on him during the trip to Mars and shown him how to work the communicator so he wasn’t set to ‘transmit-always’. For one, he was breathing harder than normal, amped up on the upcoming mission and the danger in it as well as the prospect that they were on an entirely different planet. For a second, Max’s music was infectious, and he was humming the melody from one of the Shag Carpeting 8-Tracks that his CO had played back on Earth. Whiskey 1 would have appreciated it and sang along, but it was doubtful anyone else would have enjoyed it.

_ “Option 2’s to ride in there guns blazing and kick their teeth in.” _ Max said over their suit radios.  _ “Not the best choice to start with when we have no idea where the stolen nuclear weapons are on this base, or how nasty their defenses are. I don’t know about you all, but I’m not keen on being the first human to die on Mars. Being the first one to walk on it’s enough for me.” _

_ “The greatest story you’ll never be able to tell your sons about, right?” _ Whiskey 2 said jokingly. Or at least it seemed like a joke. The hollow laugh Max answered it sucked the air out of the line.

The alien - Galactic Enforcers Officer -  _ Xylene, _ the Rookie quickly sifted through the pronouns for her before settling on her name and convincing himself it was okay to use it, chuckled a little as she shook her head.

_ “I suppose that means that you want Wes and myself to scout some, Max.” _

_ “Take the Rookie with you too.” _ Max nodded, and all of the helmets turned towards him in a move that left Baylor feeling like he needed to hide a little.

The RV pulled to a halt in a shower of gravel and Martian dust that was silent, and Whiskey 2 and Xylene got off with their weapons in hand with the Rookie right on their heels. The RV’s tires spun up again and it took off, moving to circle around a ridge between them and the crater that Vilgax’s forces had commandeered as their staging ground.  _ “Good luck, all.” _ Whiskey 1’s voice crackled over the radio, a little weaker as the terrain started to cut off their line of sight. They’d switched to short-range transmissions after leaving the ship to minimize their chances of communications being intercepted. At least until they had engaged, anyways.

Baylor had thought he was hot shit when it came to fieldcraft. It had been a mandatory pass or fail part of Sniper School and drew on his instructor’s experiences in Vietnam, and they’d been  _ rigorous _ in pounding those lessons home. It only took about a minute for him to learn that maybe General Jim Huxby’s glowering remark of his skills at their first and only meeting might not have been incorrect. Whiskey 2 whisked through the terrain like a ghost and Xylene moved sinuously, hovering over the terrain in a near-horizontal fashion the closer they came with that purple light all around her. He followed their lead, especially after one close call which led to them diving into the shadows beneath a craggy boulder when a miniature wingless airplane -  _ drone, _ Baylor recalled after the fact - zoomed around on some kind of perimeter sweep.

God, they were on Mars infiltrating an alien operation so secret and so well hidden that it had been going on for close to two decades without any attention given by the Galactic Enforcers  _ because God forbid the leaders of Earth be forced to lose face and admit that they couldn’t handle the problem themselves. _ Why the hell did this Vilgax feel the need to have his robotic henchmen be so paranoid?

After the sweep they pushed on, crawling up the small rise on their bellies and stopping at the crest. At last, they could get a head-on view of the site and Baylor raised up his sniper laser rifle, using the scope to zoom in for a better view on everything.

There were three huge boxy transports easily three times the size of Xylene’s ship, one saucer ship like the one that they had shot down back in North Dakota, and an enormous assembly line full of red robots. Most of them were smaller things,  _ drones _ that hovered about with grappling arms and cutting torches and worker models perhaps the size of a man or working up to twice that large, but there were five others as big as the one that had crawled out of the downed saucer and nearly taken them all out that were there as well. Robots large enough that they did the bulk of the work in moving the stolen missiles around the site. Piece by piece, the drones used by the alien warlord Vilgax cut through the missile’s sections with laudable precision. No explosions, no leaks, just one piece of the missile after another separated until all that was left was the warheads carefully gathered by the flying drones.

This was a  _ disassembly _ line.

“Why are they taking the missiles apart?” He asked, leaning away from his scope.

_ “You humans, still doing things so backwards.” _ Xylene answered with a sigh.  _ “He doesn’t  _ **_need_ ** _ the entire missile, the chemical reactants you use are inefficient and dangerous. Once he has the piece that goes kaboom, the rest of it can be repurposed. A phased repulsor array is a lot cleaner and a lot more efficient for thrusters.” _ She motioned with her gloved hand just a few inches above the soil and Baylor followed her aim to the second section of the workyard where red robots gutted the missile sections, removed the guts, and installed alien machinery in their place. The smallest ones seemed to be in charge of rewiring it all.  _ “He’s taking them apart, rebuilding them into something more dangerous. And it’s all thanks to your world’s asinine policy on nuclear proliferation.” _ Yup, there was that anger of hers again.

_ “One problem at a time, Xylene.” _ Whiskey 2 told her with a weariness of someone trying to avoid a very old argument.  _ “For now…” _

The alien breathed in loud enough to be heard over the radio, and let it out with an aggrieved sigh.  _ “Right. Rookie, you’re the one with the long gun. Find a good spot with elevation and cover. You’ll be overwatch for us while Wes and I make our way down there and try setting up a few...surprises.” _

“I’d do better if I had a spotter with me.” Baylor pointed out diplomatically.

_ “Yeah, you probably would.” _ Whiskey 2 said, patting him on the back as he and Xylene started to inch back down the rise again.  _ “But we make do with what we have.” _

Baylor huffed and started down after them. He’d already marked a spot in his mental map that would work for a sniper’s lookout if he could get to it unseen. “Make do with what you have,” he said to himself, trudging on.

Wasn’t that the truth.

***

It started as most things did in Whiskey 5’s short tenure with Whiskey Team, with a  _ bang. _ Or several of them spread out over a few hundred yards, detonations caused by explosives spread about the robot’s missile disassembly line. He’d kept his scope up and had done his best to find Xylene and Whiskey 2, which should have been easy considering that the rest of the landscape was red robots and machinery and spaceships. It wasn’t. The gray Plumbers suit Wes wore somehow blurred and blended with the environment at a distance in spite of the clashing colors, and Xylene had dimmed her aura to the point that it seemed more a trick of the light. More often than not he’d only seen a flicker of movement before they vanished again. Then the explosions had gone off, and so had his suit’s radio.

_ “Whiskey 2 here, we just got the party started!” _ Wes shouted, and the strength of the broadcast made it clear he’d wanted everyone to hear it. Even Xylene’s spaceship that they’d left behind them miles back. Baylor settled down into position with his sniper laser and steadied his breathing.

That was the toughest part of sniping, he’d learned back in school. You had to be in shape for it. You had to know the pulse of your own heartbeat, you had to  _ know _ how to calm it down even when adrenaline was telling your heart to beat faster,  _ faster dammit we need more oxygen and your brain needs to pay attention  _ **_now._ **

He was Overwatch. His job was simple. Make the things trying to kill his teammates dead first. Simple. Right. Like flying an airplane was simple. Like being in a firefight on a different planet was simple, when the gravity was a third of what it was on Earth and the explosions had kicked up enormous clouds of dust and debris that hung in the air endlessly. There wasn’t enough wind on Mars to blow the clouds away. Weapons fire did, though. The drones around the makeshift compound had frozen for maybe a second before they’d gone from ‘worker bees’ to ‘angry hornets looking for the intruders.’ Or at least that’s how it seemed to Baylor, when Xylene and Wes made it to cover and opened up on the closest smaller robots, melting them down and blasting them apart. They’d formed a line and Baylor made sure it held, picking apart the larger models that came racing in over their smaller brethren. That lasted for all of maybe half a minute before the robots figured out his location, then he was slinging the rifle over his shoulder and tearing ass for the hills.

_ “Hoss, we could use a rescue right about now!” _ The harried voice of Whiskey 2 shouted over the radio. Baylor kept huffing as he felt pebbles and debris smack him in the back. 

**“Light damage. Light damage. No suit punctures.”** The computerized voice made to sound like a sultry woman reported to him. Wonderful. Baylor wasn’t sure how painful death by decompression was but he didn’t feel like experiencing it any more than death by explosives or laser burns or blunt force trauma. He kept on running. “You’re not gonna die here,” he told himself, panting from the exertion and keeping his jumps limited. Sure, jumping was easy in this light gravity, but he lost the ability to change his direction when he did, and made for an easier target. To calm himself down, he ran one of his favorite songs through his head.  _ I was born in a crossfire hurricane… _

Then suddenly, the weapons fire that had been chasing him as he ran along the ridge and darted between quickly destroyed bits of cover started to die down. When Baylor slowed down enough to look back over his shoulder, he could see that the bulk of the small robot army had a more pressing problem on their plates in the form of the heavily modified 1976 GMC Motorhome that was  _ driving through and over them _ while the laser turret on the roof was blasting away at the bigger robots like it was a turkey shoot. The front fender had extended out in front of it and expanded with additional supports like the cow catcher on the front of a locomotive. It scooped up unfortunate robots, sending them flying in all directions. But what really sold the bit was that Whiskey 1 was leaned halfway out of the driver’s side window with his pulse rifle blazing, and Whiskey 4 was standing on the roof with his ion cannon. Baylor stared for half a second before he realized that the money-grubbing guncrazy lunatic must have magnetized his boots to stick in place and turn himself into a second mounted turret lobbing charged plasmaburst death on their foes.

_ “Cavalry’s here!”  _ Whiskey 1 laughed.

_ “Yippee-kai-YAY, motherfuckers!” _ Whiskey 4 shouted, chunking another pile of robots into melted slag from another burst impact.

With a second and more pressing threat on the board, the red robots that milled about in the crater like a sea of ants found themselves engaging in multiple tasks. The ones who weren’t counterattacking started moving their ill-gotten goods towards the transports. The attack saucer which had been idling in the yard started to rise up into the air. And unlike the saucer that they’d taken down at November-84, when the RV’s turret lifted the barrels up into the air and fired at it, a powerful honeycomb glow erupted over its surface when the shots impacted.

_ “Dammit, they’ve got their shields up!” _ Xylene snarled over the comms. She had two robots caught up in the grip of her purple power and she hurled them towards one of the larger tank-like drones crawling over the battlefield, rocking it from the impact and the explosions.  _ “Max, you won’t be able to get through that with your transport’s gun!” _ The saucer’s outer edge began to glow with a building weapons charge, which ominously dipped down towards the ground to take aim at them.  _ “Watch it! That thing’s got an Incineration Beam that’ll tear through you like plasma through paper!” _

_ “Shit, hang on to something Phil!” _ Max swore, and the RV swerved hard as Max gave up on firing his gun and put everything he had into driving in defensive and erratic turns and weaves. They wouldn’t have looked out of place if he were jinking the stick of a jet fighter to avoid getting his ass shot off, Baylor realized. He brought up his rifle and did his best to clear a path for his squad, chipping away at the bigger robots that tried to get in their path or looked ready to open fire on them. One lucky shot plugged a biggie right in the rack of missiles that extended out from its body a fraction of a second before it could fire them, and the resulting explosion sent pieces of it flying into the air and took out all the drones around it with the shrapnel from its corpse. None of that helped the bigger problem of the UFO that was in the air and glowing dangerously red around the outer ring of its edge, shields flaring but never breaking as Phil’s plasmabursts and the high-energy laser blasts of the RV’s turret kept pinging away at it uselessly. It was getting ready to fire and when it did…

It didn’t. Rather, it didn’t get the chance. An absolutely perfectly timed pair of missiles screamed in and exploded in white-hot plasma, rocking the saucer like a leaf in a hurricane and making every light on it shudder as the shields flared even more brightly and seemed to give out in places. Xylene’s ship screamed overhead a second later.

**_“Hate to interrupt the party, Magister, but we thought you could use some top cover.”_** The smug voice of one of the aliens they’d met earlier said conversationally.

_ “About damn time,  _ Blue Whisper!” Xylene called back.  _ “Keep that saucer occupied, we’ll deal with things down on the ground!” _

**_“Confirmed, Magister. Engaging.”_ ** Her futuristic spaceship veered up and launched another pair of missiles back at the saucer, blasting it again. It soared up and chased after it, firing its red beam after them and winging the ship, and soon the two were darting through the skies at incredible speeds. It didn’t matter anymore, and Baylor put the ships out of his mind. They had enough of a fight on the ground.

_“Wes, Xylene, we’ll keep them engaged out here. Make for those transports and shut them down, I don’t like the look of their operation.”_ Max ordered, as the RV spun back around to re-engage with the forces swarming towards them in earnest again. Baylor shook off his stupefaction and leveled his sniper laser, noting how much of its charge he’d already burned through. Maybe a dozen more shots. He used one of them and bored through a red robot that had raised a scythed foreleg up to swipe at the RV. It rattled the thing enough that Whiskey 4’s followup shot gutted it and sent it flying in pieces.

_ “Sir, you sure that you’ll be all right?” _ Whiskey 2 asked. 

_ “I have them covered.” _ Baylor said, and pulled the trigger again to smoke a hovering drone who’d been firing for the mounted turret up top and held still long enough for him to make the shot.

_ “Keep it up, Whiskey 5. Move it, Wes! The Rookie’s on Overwatch!” _

_ “Come on Wes. No time to foot this out, we’re flying!” _

_ “Damnit Xylene, you know how I feel about you picking me up with your powers! And it’s  _ **_hoofing it!”_ ** Whiskey 2 complained as he was hauled up in her aura and the two of them soared through the air towards the first of the transports.

Baylor wanted to say something to reassure Wes and Xylene, but the fighting was too intense and there were more of those smaller hovering drones coming his way. He swore and stowed his rifle, bringing out the smaller laser pistol that had been strapped to his waist and that he hadn’t fired yet in anger. Hadn’t needed to. But he knew well enough how to bring it up, power it on, and disengage the safety. He took off running and fired shots behind him while the drones tried to pelt him with the same, listening all the while to the sounds of battle over the comms.

_ “Coop, coming up behind us!” _

_ “I have them, 1, relax.” _

_ “Fuckit, boss, watch the bumps!” _

_ “You’ve got maglocks on your boots for a reason, Phil!” _

_ “Doesn’t help me if I’m knocked flat on my ass with broken ankles!” _

“Whiskey 5, I could use a pickup right about now!” Baylor shouted, cutting over the conflicting voices of the others. The laserfire from the drones around him was getting too close, and one clipped at his ankle and made him yelp before his suit fired an alarm.

**“Warning. Right boot damaged. Compromise imminent. Deploying countermeasures.”** And then there was a hiss of something, the smell of some kind of astringent, and a splash of something wet around his lower leg and his foot that quickly hardened and gained mass. It messed up his gait and sent him tumbling, and instinct alone kept him from collapsing completely. Instead, fighting the wince in his back from the odd roll, he snagged up his rifle, corkscrewed about, and came into a kneeling aim. He was too close for the scope and he didn’t need it anyways. There were a host of drones flying down towards him, guns at the ready to cut him to pieces.

He didn’t give them the chance. There was one good thing about firing at robots, there was no hesitation about shooting at them like he did against living targets. To his sensibilities, it was no different than taking down clay targets launched into the air.

Jerry Baylor had always been good at skeet shooting. He stopped counting his shots and lost track of how many drones there were. He aimed and fired until his rifle’s power cell went dry, and after two clicks with no resulting laser beam, he swung it onto his back, whipped up his laser pistol again, and kept on firing. They shot back and plugged him in the shoulder, nearly knocking the breath out of him when the shot pierced through his suit and exposed him momentarily to the sucking vacuum of the thin Martian atmosphere. Then the suit kicked in again, foaming his shoulder and half of his chest and his upper arm, sealing the wound and making his right arm heavy and limp. It forced him to fire single-handed for the last two flying drones and as soon as he’d cleared them out, a larger one about the size of a horse was coming towards him to finish what they’d started.

The report of Whiskey 4’s ion cannon had never been so welcomed, and it blasted the drone apart right before the RV pulled up alongside of him, kicking up a cloud of dust when Max hit the brakes. Whiskey 1 leaned out the driver’s side window, face hidden behind the visor of his helmet, and waved a hand at him.  _ “Don’t just stand there getting more holes shot into you Rookie, get inside already!” _

Stumbling around the side of the RV with one foot feeling like it was stuck in styrofoam and his right shoulder aching from the wound and the momentary exposure and the feeling of heaviness, Baylor made for the side door. He was nearly around the nose of the RV when there was a barrage of laserfire from a row of defenders closing in on them from the side, and a bellowing cry of pain came from Whiskey 4. 

_ “Shit! Fuckers got me!” _ Phil swore, rolling off of the side of the RV to plop in front of Baylor in a groaning heap. Smoke and oxygen vapor was steaming out of a hole in the side of his suit before the same foam kicked in, and Baylor grabbed at him with his left arm, Phil’s oversized gun and all.

_ “Rookie, get him in NOW!” _ Whiskey 1 shouted in a harder voice, punctuated by several flashes of return laserfire. Baylor didn’t waste time on niceties, he jerked the man up and  _ shoved him _ into the side of the RV, hobbling in after and closing the door after him. They were rolling again even before he got the door completely shut, and Baylor sagged against it as the pain caught up to him. That lasted for all of maybe a few seconds before his suit spoke to him again.

**“Remote command accepted. Administering nanokit injection.”** There was a prick at the base of his neck that made him flinch, and then a soothing warmth spread over him along with a burst of fresh energy. Whiskey 3 was on them both in moments, grabbing at Whiskey 4 and dragging him over to the kitchen booth. The ion cannon that Billings had been carrying forever lay uselessly on the floor.

_ “Damn, Phil, they don’t give you medals for getting injured this often.” _ Whiskey 3 said, trying to be lighthearted about it.

_ “Fuck you, Coop, just fix it up already.” _ Whiskey 4 groaned, slumping on the table.

Whiskey 1 broke Baylor from his staring.  _ “Rookie, get up here! You’re taking Coop’s place on the guns!” _

Baylor took a gulp of processed, sterilized oxygen to clear the dizziness he felt. It did nothing for the unusual combination of panic, giddiness, and something he was beginning to think might be the beginnings of a psychotic break. It didn’t matter, though. They still had a job to do, and Whiskey 3 was busy patching up Whiskey 4 so he wouldn’t bleed out. The Rookie made his way forward and sank into the passenger seat, noting the presence of a joystick that was extended out from the glove compartment. It was accompanied by a small television screen in the dash above it that displayed a targeting reticule and a full-color image of the battle going on outside.

One hand on the wheel and the other on the laser rifle stuck out the open window, Whiskey 1 turned them around and went nose-first towards the group of robots that had ambushed them.

_ “Take the control stick, aim the turret, push the fire button.” _ Colonel Tennyson ordered curtly, and kept on driving. Baylor did so and immediately started laying the hurt on the drones attacking them outside. He ended up chuckling, but offered no comment and the Colonel was too busy to ask for an explanation. The Colonel would’ve found the reason irritating, anyways.

How would he take it if Baylor told him that it felt like he was playing a game of Pong to save the world?

***

They were up against an army of robots sent by an alien warlord, and they were somehow holding their own. Whiskey 5 wondered what kind of force drove Colonel Max Tennyson as he sneaked glances over to the commander of Whiskey Team. On the surface he’d looked like any other career soldier. But career soldiers didn’t have friendships with alien law enforcement or sniff their noses at regulations. Career soldiers didn’t risk everything to travel to another planet to chase down stolen property. Career soldiers followed orders, reported their findings, and waited for someone higher up the chain to tell them what to do next.

Colonel Tennyson didn’t seem to care about any of that. He just cared about getting the job done. So did the rest of his team.

No wonder Merlin called them a bunch of loose cannons. Their approach must chafe horribly on that man’s sensibilities. It still felt weird to Baylor, but in the thick of it, as he kept pulling the trigger and blasted another small pack of drones to molten slag, he knew one thing for certain.

If he had to be stuck in this airless hellscape fighting for his life, there was nobody else he’d want to do it with besides Whiskey Team.

_ “Wes, status!” _ Colonel Tennyson demanded over the radio. 

_ “They’re still trying to load up the transports, but it looks like they’re separating the loads. There’s one transport we’ve grounded without the nukes, and there’s a second with the warheads they hadn’t converted. The third has finished missiles though…” _

**_“Magister, the_** **Blue Whisper** ** _is going down!”_** The voice of the Galactic Enforcers agent on Xylene’s ship suddenly broke into the communications circuit. **_“That saucer was tougher than we expected, it roughed us up some before we managed to blow it apart and we’re losing power to the thrusters!”_**

_ “Damnit! Try and put her down close by, Salo!” _ Xylene ordered.  _ “Nobody dies, you hear me!” _

**_“We’ll try, Magister. Wish us luck.”_ **

_ “Well, there goes our air support.”  _ Whiskey 1 murmured, and Baylor looked out of the windshield in time to see the blue spaceship they’d taken to get here come screaming down towards the surface, trailing smoke.  _ “Don’t worry, Rookie. Xylene’s crashed her ship in worse places than this and gotten away with it. Stay focused on the job.” _

“Yes, sir.” Baylor nodded, and winced when the push of the robot army seemed to increase. The ones who had been working on loading up the missile parts onto the transports dropped their loads and turned towards them with weapons at the ready. Right about then, Whiskey 3 came forward from the back of the RV and set his hands on their headrests.

_ “I’ve got Phil stabilized and patched up good as I can for now. He’ll live but he’s already complaining about paid time off.” _ Cooper said wearily.  _ “Things still look FUBAR’ed up here, I see.” _

_ “Yeah, what else is new?” _ Whiskey 1 snorted.  _ “Rookie’s pretty good on the guns, but Xylene says there’s a transport full of processed, alien-upgraded missiles we still have to deal with. And these things are bound and determined to get in our way.” _ He spun the wheel away from the robots and the transports and took the RV towards emptier landscape, running over smashed up debris from the battle that rattled them even through the shocks and suspension.

Whiskey 5 spun the turret around behind them and took potshots at the robots that were flying or running after them, and the RV’s radio let out one alarm after another as impacts from their weapons rattled it.  **“Danger. Danger. Incoming fire exceeding ablative armor tolerance.”**

_ “Thank you for stating the obvious.”  _ Colonel Tennyson grumbled. There was movement on his gun camera, and Whiskey 5 found himself looking as one of the transports started to lift off from the ground, its back hatch still open as a few drones piled inside with some last pieces of gear.

“Uh. Colonel, sir?” Baylor said tentatively. “We’ve got a ship taking off.” Whiskey 1’s helmet jerked towards his side mirror and he swore.

_ “Xylene, please tell me you and Wes are on that ship lifting off the ground.” _

_ “We aren’t.” _ Came the grim reply from the alien woman.  _ “That’s the one with the finished missiles. Max, we’re out of position, we can’t get to it!” _

Whiskey 1 sighed, then sucked in a breath full of determination.  _ “Guess it’s up to us then.” _

_ “Max, that’s insane!”  _ Whiskey 2 yelled at him.  _ “You have the rest of the robots between you and that ship! You’ll never get to it in time before it takes off, and we don’t have a ship that can follow it now!” _

The RV sped up and passed a sloped rise around a sizable crater from some past impact that the windstorms on Mars hadn’t eroded away completely. By now, the robots had fallen behind a fair amount, not that it kept Whiskey 5 from shooting at them. The sudden braking and 180 degree spin that Colonel Tennyson used to bring them about, facing the direction they’d come a good mile past the slope however…

_ “You’re right.”  _ Whiskey 1 answered. The distant quality of his voice made Whiskey 5 shiver.  _ “We’ll never get to it in time before it takes off.” _

The radio paused.  _ “Max, please tell me you aren’t about to do what I think you are.” _

Max didn’t bother answering that hopeful remark.  _ “Xylene, take Wes and fall back to your ship. Regroup with your team and then come back loaded for bear.” _

_ “Just remember that tank of yours doesn’t have wings, flyboy.” _ Xylene warned him. Max left that comment go unresolved as well, and glanced back to Whiskey 3, who swore and raced to the back, muttering about  _ ‘fucking fighter jocks’ _ and something about stasis fields.

_ “You’ll want to buckle up for this, Rookie, and put the turret forward.” _ Max said. Whiskey 5 swallowed inside of his helmet and snapped the belt into place, then jerked on the stick until the laser turret was back at zero. Max flipped a toggle on the dash and blew out air while the front fender of the RV extended out again into a ramming sled. A second switch caused a metal shield to raise up over the windshield from the nose of the vehicle as well as the side windows, and a third button press projected the image from the laser turret’s gun camera onto the now-covered windshield. It was the only window that they had to the outside world now. Max jammed his foot onto the accelerator, and they tore off back towards the fight, with the alien transport ship gaining altitude rapidly.

_ “Rookie!” _ Max barked out, and Whiskey 5 jumped in his seat a little.  _ “You remember that little red button I told you never to press?” _

Baylor’s eyes darted down to the console between their seats, where the gearshift and the ominous red button on top of it waited. Max had it jammed into third gear and had both hands on the wheel tightly, holding the vehicle steady as laserfire began to pelt their front end again. “Yeah?” He shouted back.

_ “PRESS the little red button!”  _ Max yelled. Baylor reached for it shakily, flipped the cover off of it with his gloved thumb, and punched it. There were some impressive sounds from the rear of the RV after that, and then…

**Speed.** Sudden, violent, intense acceleration that slammed him back hard into his seat and left him gasping. Speed that the robots hadn’t accounted for, and Max’s grip on the steering wheel was hard as steel and just as steady. Baylor looked over to the speedometer and swallowed as the needle passed 140 MPH...and kept on going until it circled back around and pressed hard at the stopper on the other side of the dial at 0. 

“Ohhh, shit. OH, SHIT!” Baylor screamed, as they plowed through the robots and Max pointed them to the rise they’d driven past, a rise that resembled an ominous ramp. 

_“Easy. Easy. Don’t move that turret away from straight on, I need to see where I’m aiming. These rocket thrusters are touchy.”_ Max said soothingly, his voice eerily calm in the violence of the wild maneuver. 

“Xylene was right, this thing doesn’t have wings! We can’t fly!”

_“This isn’t flying, kid, relax. How else are we going to get up on that ship?”_

Baylor clenched his teeth as the RV finally cleared through the last of the robots that couldn’t scramble away in time and hit the slope. They screamed up the incline and when they hit the end of it, they were going so fast that the RV shot into the air like it had been fired from a gun. But then, considering that pushing the red button had activated _hidden rocket boosters_ in the back of the RV, it was probably better to say that they’d been launched like a missile.

His stomach sank down to his bladder and Baylor gripped the armrests of his chair as they soared high up into the air, flying towards the still rising spaceship. “We’re not gonna make it!”

_ “We’ll make it.” _

“We’re not gonna make it!” Baylor repeated, terrified. 

_ “We’ll make it!” _ And sure enough, for a moment it seemed like they were aimed straight for the back end of the transport, whose rear hatch was even now trying to close up.  _ “Shoot the hatch, Rookie!” _ Baylor’s hand snapped back to the joystick and he started pushing the trigger so hard that he thought that he might break it. Blast after blast from the turret on the roof of the RV slammed into the ass end of the spaceship, warping the alien metal of the hatch until it glowed red hot. It finally gave way when a shot passed through the door and hit something explosive, blowing the hatch out completely. That was about the time that the lurching feeling in Baylor’s stomach finally gave way to the weak gravity of Mars. 

They’d reached the peak of their jump, and they were about to start falling down again. Thousands and thousands of feet to the ground below them, and the alien ship would get away.

Max reached up to the ceiling full of tiny buttons and switches.  _ “You have the scope zeroed in straight ahead still, Rookie?” _

“Never took it off zero axis, sir!”

_ “Good. Hang on to something.” _ Max punched a button, and there came a powerful  _ thunk _ from under their feet. On the gun camera’s projection, he watched as some kind of projectile on a steel rope shot out and soared into the darkness of the transport’s interior.  _ “C’mon, you bastard, hit something…” _ Whiskey 1 hissed under his breath. Whatever he’d fired must have, because the rope went taut and Max let out a whoop as they found themselves being pulled in. The Colonel hit a pair of buttons underneath the steering wheel and a jolt shook the RV, stabilizing it and keeping it from dropping for a time. Enough that the rope reeled them towards the spaceship until the front wheels hit the deck plating, and Max laughed as another jolt pressed Baylor back into his seat for a moment and shoved them the rest of the way in.  _ “Hey, Coop! Good news. The thrusters and the grappling hook both work fine! And you were worried!” _

_ “I’m STILL worried!” _ Whiskey 3 fired back heatedly.

“You ramped us over a mile into the sky, shot out the back door of a spacecraft, and then  _ landed _ this tank of an RV  _ into _ said spacecraft.” Baylor got out, gripping his armrests so hard that he would undoubtedly be leaving imprints. 

_ “It worked, didn’t it?” _ Whiskey 1 countered brightly. Now that they were inside the ship, they could make out the contents. The other end of the grappling cable was tied to a barbed hook embedded in a massive container that looked like it had been dragged several feet before it smashed into the biggest drone in the rear storage bay and crushed it. The destroyed robot gave the anchor point enough mass and stopping power to hold the RV’s grapple. A few drones were moving around, and the refitted missiles were strapped against the hull and on floor mounts.  _ “Hm. No way we’re getting these missiles out of here before this ship gets away. Whiskey 3! Got any of the Mark 24’s back there still?” _

_ “Just one...why?” _

_ “Set the timer for 4 minutes and get ready to chuck it out the side door on my mark. Rookie, get your gun ready!” _

He was crazy. That was the answer to everything, Baylor told himself as he slammed a fresh power pack into his sniper laser rifle. The man was absolutely  _ crazy. _ Max Tennyson lived it, breathed it, preached it. The barricades over the windshields and windows lowered at a button press as the robots, hesitating to open up with their energy weapons or missiles in confined quarters, came racing for the RV. Max had his gun and one arm out the window and Baylor stuck his sniper laser out the other, tearing off the scope and taking boresight potshots whenever he could. Max treated the ride like they were in a bumper car arena, sideswiping piles of robots and shooting at the ones that got too close. Especially the ones who jumped up on the nose of the RV and tried punching their way in through the windshield. Those got blasted into heaps that the windshield wipers scraped off like oversized insects.

_ “Mark 24 prepped, boss!” _ Whiskey 3 called up, the sound of his labored breathing audible over the channel.

_ “Roll it out!” _ Whiskey 1 ordered, and there was the shiver of a heavy metal cylinder thumping dully out of the RV’s side door before another near-silent thump of the door closing sounded.

_ “Deployed!” _

_ “Hang on to something, everyone! We’re getting off this banana boat!” _ The RV spun around until they were facing out towards the exit, with smoke still streaming out the back. Through the gaping hole in the ship’s stern, the faint glow of the Martian skies and the dull orange and brown landscape of the planet loomed, beneath them and getting farther away every second. Whiskey 1 gunned the engine and they screamed out of the ship, leaving it behind them and plummeting towards the surface.

In an RV. A damaged RV. An RV that probably didn’t have…

“Colonel? Do we have a parachute in this crate?” Baylor asked hopefully.

_ “No, we don’t. Seems like the kind of thing we ought to look into adding, though.” _ Colonel Tennyson replied easily.  _ “Are they still shooting at us?” _

The need to follow orders won out over his rising panic at  _ falling out of a spaceship _ and Baylor spun the laser turret around, using the gun camera to track the spaceship rising up higher and higher away from the planet. “No, they aren’t.” 

_ “Good. Landing this crate’s going to be hard enough without getting blown to pieces. I wanted them to think we made a run for it.” _

“Isn’t that what we did, sir?” Baylor asked, looking out the windshield as the nose tipped down slightly into a dive.

_ “Not quite. We couldn’t stop them from leaving the surface and we couldn’t disable the missiles, not in the time we had. And there was no chance in hell I was going to stay on that ship any longer than we had to, not with Wes and our reinforcements stranded down below.” _ Max toggled the switches and there was a jolt that swung the nose up, pointing them towards the sky.  _ “Altimeter. This thing needs a fragging altimeter.” _

“Why would an RV need a goddamn  _ altimeter?!” _ Baylor exploded in panic. “What kind of...You drive out of spaceships or airplanes on a regular basis?”

Max huffed and shook his head inside of his suit’s helmet.  _ “Were you ever a boy scout, Rookie?” _

Baylor shook his head. Cub Scout, yes, but he quit going before he could’ve moved up. But he knew what the man was driving at.  _ Be prepared, _ the motto went. “How are we going to survive this, sir?”

_ “Turn the turret around facing backwards and get us a view of the ground. I’m going to be firing the thrusters, and trying for sporadic bursts. It wasn’t built for it, but…” _ The man shrugged.  _ “Either we put her down gently or we’ll make the least impressive crater on this side of Mars.” _

“I don’t know why the General thought that I could change the way your team operates.” Baylor said, swiveling the laser cannon on the roof of the RV until it was pointed at the ground instead of the sky. 

He didn’t see Colonel Tennyson’s eyes fix on him, but he could feel them.  _ “Merlin thought what? You a spy for him, son?” _

“I don’t know why I ended up on your team. You have a four-man element, I’m the odd one out. I got the feeling he didn’t like your methods very much, sir.”

_ “Nothing new there, Baylor.” _ Colonel Tennyson said, using his name for the first time. It jolted with a touch of surprise.  _ “Tennysons have a habit of getting on his nerves.” _

“Good God, there’s  _ more _ of you?” Whiskey 5 blurted out. Max chuckled and changed the subject.

_ “We don’t have an altitude reading, so I’m counting on you to eyeball it. Once I fire the thrusters, you tell me when it looks like we’re standing still. I’m going to try dropping us in stages to save on our booster fuel.” _

“How much do we have left?”

_ “...Not as much as I’d like.” _

_ “...Whiskey 1, respond!”  _ The near-panicked voice of Wes cut in over their conversation.

_ “Not now, Wes.” _ The Colonel replied, nodding at Baylor.  _ “Whiskey 5 and I are trying to land the MCC without a parachute or wings. Baylor, call it out for me.” _

_ “My God, you...you’re serious.”  _ Wes Green murmured in horror.  _ “Boss…” _

“NOW!” Baylor shouted, cutting off the worry of Whiskey 2, and Max punched the thrusters, which took a bit to unfold, warm up, and fire. Damnit, he’d have to account for that too wouldn’t he? “Release!” The lurching feeling of resisting gravity ended and they started to fall again.

It made for the most terrifying three minutes of his life. Plummeting down a thousand feet at a crack by his guesstimate, broken up solely by his shouts and the sputtering thrusters on the back of the RV as Max fired them over and over again, in the hopes that they wouldn’t turn into a sticky paste of blood, mangled flesh, and crumpled metal and plastic on impact. And maybe he had Whiskey 1 hold it a little bit too long there at the end when they still had a hundred feet left of airtime to go out of dread panic, but how was he supposed to know that they would run out of juice after that? They hit the ground hard with the back end and the rear wheels smashing down first before the nose tipped down and rattled his teeth as the RV settled. The whiplash of being thrown around didn’t help any either, and if it hadn’t been for a flash of light that cocooned around him and kept him immobile while the rest of the RV seemed to shudder, rattle, and nearly crumple on impact, Baylor probably would have gotten a concussion out of it. And probably a lot worse. When the RV stopped bouncing and finally settled back onto its wheels in an upright position, the light around him died down and he heard swearing and groaning coming from Whiskey 3 and 4 on their channel.

_ “MAX!” _ Xylene screamed over the radio.

_ “Boss!” _ Wes repeated the shout.

_ “We’re alive.” _ Colonel Tennyson answered them wearily, putting a gloved hand up to the front of his helmet, like he’d been going to run a hand through his hair and forgot that it was there. 

_ “Somehow.” _ Whiskey 4 whined over the radio.  _ “What the  _ fuck, _ boss? You see the alien ship getting away and your first thought is, hey, you know what we oughta do? We oughta see if this thing can do a ramp jump better than the General Lee!” _

_ “It worked, didn’t it?” _ The Colonel said with a laugh, opening the door of the RV and stumbling out of it on shaky legs.  _ “Any crash you can walk away from.” _

_ “That ship’s still getting away, you know.” _ Xylene pointed out.

_ “Is it?” _ Colonel Tennyson countered, and his tone made Baylor roll down the window of the passenger door and stick his head out, looking up into the sky in the vague direction of where the spaceship had been fleeing. He remembered the ‘Mark 24’ that Whiskey 1 had ordered Whiskey 3 to roll out the side door about two heartbeats before a brilliant explosion of light ignited high above them, and his helmet’s visor darkened automatically. He jerked his head back around to look at Max, standing beside the RV with a hand tipped up against his helmet’s visor with a casual air, like he was watching an airplane flying overhead.  _ “Four minutes. Nice work, Whiskey 3.” _

_ “Goddamnit, Max.” _ Wes offered a long-suffering sigh.  _ “What did you do?” _

_ “We tossed out a Mark 24 before we jumped ship.” _ Max told his second in command.  _ “Best way to make sure that this Vilgax doesn’t get his hands on those retrofitted nuclear missiles, isn’t it? But enough about that. The rest of the robots?” _

_ “They all shut down and then self-destructed once that ship got up and away.”  _ Xylene scowled.  _ “Vilgax must be trying to hide the evidence. I’m amazed he didn’t rig up the other transports to blow either.” _

_ “The transports are generic though, right? Like the saucers?” _

_ “Yeah, they’re pretty common even out of GE-controlled space.” _

_ “That would be why then.” _ Max harrumphed.  _ “Nice to know we have a ship we can still use, though. And you have the other warheads secured?” _

_ “Yes, Colonel.” _ Whiskey 2 confirmed.  _ “And Xylene made contact with her team. They’re a little banged up but nothing serious. They were loading up their emergency supplies and all the sensitive equipment and should be coming our way. I don’t know how you’re going to explain this mess to Merlin, though.” _

_ “If anyone asks, Xylene, I’m telling them you blew up all the missiles.” _ Max Tennyson said, dismissing Whiskey 2’s concerns far too easily. The alien woman laughed at him.

_ “That’s fine. I’m just sad I didn’t think of it first.” _

***

_ Enroute to Earth _

_ March 11th, 1979 C.E. _

_ Evening _

  
  


To everyone’s relief, the transport that Xylene and Wes had commandeered was not only full of stolen warheads that hadn’t been processed yet (Including some Russian ones and wasn’t  _ that _ interesting) but it was also equipped with a life support system. That meant that once they’d tossed out all of the deactivated and exploded drones Vilgax had sent to do his dirty work and loaded up the MCC in the back, all they’d had to do was seal the ship up, move a few switches and everyone, even the aliens, were able to take off their helmets and breathe without smelling their own reprocessed, sweat-soaked air. And take off their suits also, which allowed the alien medic on Xylene’s squad to patch them up a little bit better. Baylor’s foot and shoulder still felt a little numb from the swallowing pressure of the foam casts that had set in to stabilize their injuries and seal his suit punctures, and Phil was in even  _ worse _ shape.

“You know, I gotta say that I’m a little impressed with you humans.” Per’ri the Perk said in a somewhat craggy voice that made Baylor think of Munchkins, especially the butch ones in the Lollipop Guild. He definitely wasn’t in Kansas anymore, after all. “For a bunch of bipeds with no special talent, you sure have a knack for blowing stuff up. Too bad you don’t know how to stay out of the blast radius.”

“Thanks, Perry.” Phil said weakly, worn out after the nanokit had gotten to work in healing his injuries. Wes was standing beside the injured Plumber and patted him on the shoulder condescendingly before Phil scowled and shoved his arm off.

“That’s  _ Per’ri!” _ The Perk huffed, his rounded belly puffing up a little. And now Jerry was thinking about blowfishes. “Anyhow, just take it easy for the next couple of days. You have to give those nanos a chance to work on your wounds.” Then the alien pointed to the pile of foam that they had pulled out of their suits and off of their bodies once they’d been in a pressurized atmosphere again. “Are you two going to eat that?”

“Uh, what?” Baylor blurted out, blinking. “That’s - that’s  _ foam. _ We can’t eat that.”

“More for me then!” The little Perk shrugged happily, then waddled over to it. Before Baylor’s shocked eyes, the small pudgy green alien dislocated his jaw, opened his mouth incredibly wide, and  _ horked down _ the entire pile of discarded bits of hardened foam in one massive bite. The resulting swallow bulged his gut out for all of maybe a second before his body returned to its normal shape.

Per’ri let out a satisfied moan and tilted his head back, belching up a small jet of flame. “Oh, that’s  _ good. _ I don’t know what you humans put in your bio-foam, but it tastes even better than ours does. What’s your secret? Polyphenols? Ethyl salicylate?”

Xylene came in, wearing a smirk as she saw the gobsmacked look on the faces of the humans. “I think Max told me once that it had to do with an extract from some plant that grows on their oceans. They use it in a dessert called ice cream too.”

“Magister, please tell me that we can stop and get some ice cream to eat before we get back.” The Perk pleaded, and Xylene shook her head.

“No luck, Per’ri. Earth’s off-limits to us except in dire emergencies.” She patted the crestfallen alien on the head and looked back to the three humans in the Perk’s medical bay. “So, Wes. How are you feeling?”

“Like I could use a three-day nap.” The Navajo answered her honestly. “We don’t often get the chance to go off-world.”

“And I don’t enjoy explaining to GE Command that I’ve wrecked another ship.” Xylene scowled. “But it happens. I was looking for Max, have you seen him?”

“Knowing him, he’ll be in the cargo bay trying to fix up our Mobile Command Center.” Wes said. He nodded to Baylor. “Rookie, why don’t you walk down with the lady? Make sure Max keeps it professional.”

“You think he’ll try and take advantage of me?” Xylene widened her eyes, and Wes smiled and shook his head.

“Other way around, beautiful.” 

“When do I stop getting called the Rookie?” Baylor cut in, breaking up the flirting. 

“You made it through a mission with us.” Phil Billings said, only slurring a little bit through his anesthetic. “I think now’s good. Your name’s Baylor, right? So...I think Bales.” Whiskey 4 glanced over to Wes. “What do you think, Green?”

“Bales?” Wes sounded it out in his head and smiled. “Well, he did  _ bail _ you out of some trouble there, Phil. So yeah. Bales works.” He nodded at Whiskey 5. “Well, don’t just stand there, Bales. Per’ri gave you a clean bill of health, get going.”

“Yes, sir.” Baylor smiled and gave the man a salute that Wes waved off with a snort. He walked down the ship’s corridor in a pair of borrowed leggings that kept him warm, but tugged slightly on his skin. He’d refused the shirt, staying with his white undershirt for comfort. Bales, Phil and Wes had called him. He could get used to the name.

As they walked on in silence, ‘Bales’ thought that Xylene was going to keep to the silent treatment, but the alien woman actually spoke to him. “You did good work today.” She told him. “Max picked a good one when he chose you to join his squad.”

“He didn’t.”

“What?”

“Choose me.” Baylor explained, noticing how Xylene shivered in the cool circulated air of the borrowed spaceship. “I got assigned to him. This was my first mission.”

Xylene gave him a look that was both understanding and pitying. “This would have been a lot for your first mission, Bales, but you came through all right. I know that Plumbers like to keep to Earth and stay separate from the Galactic Enforcers, but I’ll tell you the same thing I told Max and Wes; I’d scoop you up as one of our agents in a heartbeat. A few revolutions of experience and you’d be a good magister.”

Baylor laughed a little brokenly at the idea, shaking his head. “Honestly, ma’am? I think that this is the last time I’ll be leaving Earth. I prefer to keep my feet on the ground.”

“Considering the stunts Max likes to pull, I can’t really blame you for that.” The alien woman hummed.

“Ma’am? If it’s all right, do you think I could ask you a question?” She nodded. “How did you and Colonel Tennyson meet up?”

“Well, that was...hm. What year is it by your calendar?” 

“1979.”

“14 years ago then. He shot down a saucer I was a prisoner on, got shot down himself, and we crawled out of the jungle together.”

“Huh.” Baylor blinked, tracing the encounter back to the early days of the Vietnam War. “That’s it?”

“That’s all you get to hear, Bales.” Xylene purred. “It’s not my story to tell.” Then they were at the door to the cargo bay, and Xylene winked at him as they walked inside.

Just like Wes had predicted, Colonel Tennyson was working on the RV when they walked up to it. So was Coop, although he was underneath the enormous vehicle and Max was inside of it. 

In their haste to get the RV inside of the alien transport, get the ship working, and get off of Mars and headed back towards Earth, Baylor hadn’t paid much attention to their trusty vehicle. Sure, it had gone a little slower and there was a clunk to it that hadn’t been there even during the fight, but Colonel Tennyson was still able to drive it. Now that he’d been patched up, Baylor could see just how roughed up the vehicle was after the firefights, the death-defying jumps and falls, and that final crash landing. The sides and the back of the vehicle were blackened by weapon impacts and slightly warped or melted in places, just by how the thing sagged even on the jacks he could tell the suspension was shot, and there was a filmy layer of Martian dust caked on the sides of it that looked like it’d take an industrial car wash to get off. Max saw them coming and called out to them, and Coop pulled himself out from underneath it.

“How bad’s the damage?” Baylor asked.

“I’m amazed it held together.” Coop grumbled. “We shoved every piece of gear we could think of into it, and it still wasn’t enough. The suspension is shot, Max here almost broke the spine in that freefall stunt, we’ll have to redo most of the armor plating, and it’s so caked up with ionized dust that if we don’t get it cleaned off, we’re going to have to start calling this thing a Rustbucket.”

“Hey, now.” Max protested, and Coop waved him off. “I found another problem too, Coop. The toilet’s not flushing right.”

“There’s the end of the effin’ world.” Coop snorts. “How’s the vitals?”

“Got a reading. You were right about us tearing a hole in the fuel tank, there’s about 15 gallons of gasoline on the surface of Mars right now. Good thing we were running off of the batteries.” 

Baylor heard the word and didn’t even want to  _ think  _ about just what the man meant by that. He was just sure it wasn’t anything that had the word Energizer stamped anywhere on it and that was already one thought too many right now. Cooper looked just as wasted as he took off his work gloves and pressed the palm of his hand up against the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “It’s a miracle we aren’t dead, Max. You have God’s own luck.”

“Too much to live for.” Max told his squad member, looking over to Baylor and grinning. “You did good work out there, kid.”

“Actually, sir?” Baylor said. “Whiskey 4 came up with a nickname for me. It’s Bales.”

“Bales, huh?” Max chuckled. “Well. If Phil signed off on it, okay. And you’re definitely not a rookie now.” His eyes danced over to Xylene. “So, gorgeous. Did you come down here to talk shop?”

“Sort of.” Xylene said. “There are two things I wanted to tell you before we got back to Earth. The first thing is, Vilgax is the kind of tyrant who holds a grudge. We stopped him here, but if he’s got his eyes set on Earth and your  _ idiotic stockpiles _ of nuclear weaponry for his warmongering, then he isn’t going to stop with just one setback. And the next time he comes for you, he’s not going to be playing it quiet. Next time, Max, he’s going to come out swinging.”

Colonel Tennyson sighed. “Yeah, I kind of figured that would be the case. You’ll have your people send us his profile, right? So we know what to expect?”

“What I can.” Xylene nodded. “Which isn’t much, with your planet being declared off-limits to interference and GE operations.”

“Right. Okay. And what’s the second thing?” Max asked her.

“My boys got this ship’s sorry excuse of a communications system hooked up to our Hyperwave circuit we pulled out of the  _ Blue Whisper. _ We made contact with GE Command and let them know about the mission, and I thought you might appreciate calling home to let them know you were coming on a different ship. I’d hate to get shot down  _ again, _ after all, and I’m three for three on missions with you now.”

“Axila 7 didn’t count, Xylene.”

“The bounty on your head that the Blue Suns and Blood Pack signed off on say otherwise, Tennyson.” It really was an old thing between them, and the way that they looked at each other made Baylor blink. Max smiled often, but his smile here was more relaxed, and Xylene may have been alien, but she wasn’t using anything less than pure bedroom eyes on Whiskey 1. The Colonel rolled his eyes and conceded the point.

“Think your tech boys can patch a call back to my girl here?” Max asked her, moving past the old argument. Xylene cocked her head to the side.

“Yeah, probably.” She rolled her shoulders. “Sure I can’t just convince you to join up with the Galactic Enforcers, though?”

“Xylene.” Max shook his head, and Xylene smiled again.

“Well. At least we’ll always have Roswell.”

“That we will.” Max agreed, and she waved before turning around and walking off. Max started for the side door of the RV and lingered in the entrance, examining the damage and the dust that coated it. “Rustbucket, huh?”

“You could do worse for a name, sir. And you have to admit it sounds a lot better than  _ Mobile Command Center.” _ Baylor pointed out. Max snorted and stepped in, and Baylor followed, slumping into the passenger seat while the Colonel took the driver’s seat again with the soft harmonizing of the Little River Band played from the 8-Track. “I see the tape player still works.”

“Hm.” Max grunted, and Baylor tipped his head back, closing his eyes. God, was he tired. And sore. And wounded, come to think of it.

“What now, sir?” He asked Max.

“Now?” Max replied. “We get back home. We get my girl here towed back to Avalon for some repairs and upgrades, and we get ready for what comes next.”

“...Vilgax?” Baylor said the name, wary of it. He heard Max shift against the fabric of the driver’s seat.

“Xylene said Vilgax holds grudges. He’ll be back. And this time, we’ll be ready for him. That’s what we do. That’s why the Plumbers exist, we’re the line between everything out there that wants to hurt us, and the rest of humanity.”

“Yeah. Whiskey Team’s going to have its hands full.” Baylor agreed. 

Max was quiet for a bit after that. “You know, I was going to transfer you to a different squad after this. You didn’t go through the usual process, and everyone deserves a shot to see Malta and Tranquility Base before they get thrown to the wolves. Not to mention you weren’t my pick. Finding out Jim stuck you with us to try and ‘calm us down’ was more than a little irritating.”

“Didn’t work, though.” Baylor pointed out, rolling his head to the side and cracking an eye open. “Are you saying you don’t want to kick me out of your unit now?”

“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Bales.” Max said. “And we don’t have a lot of room on this crate, but if you’re up to staying on, I’m sure that I could talk Wes and Coop into rigging up something for you to sleep on properly…”

Baylor held up his hand to stop him. “Thanks, Colonel, but...I think I need something quieter after this mission. Like a police action.” Max laughed at that. “But if you do ever need a fifth guy on your squad in a few months…” Baylor looked to the older man, and there was a level of respect that passed between them when Tennyson gave him a single nod.

Then the radio turned on as Xylene’s crew patched them into a transmission back to Earth, and Max worked the dials to get onto the Plumber frequency. 

The initial report to Avalon took several minutes longer than Baylor had thought it would, and that was all due to the fact that Merlin himself got on the horn and immediately started grilling Colonel Tennyson on the results of the mission. He wasn’t pleased to hear that Max had broken regulations and sought outside help. He was less than thrilled to learn that an alien warlord the entire Galactic Enforcers feared and hadn’t yet been able to pin down was behind the last two decades of nuclear-related alien activity. And as for the missing missiles…

_ “Whiskey, what in God’s name convinced you that blowing them up was a good idea?” _ The old man growled over the radio.

Max smiled and tried to keep it out of his voice. “Well, sir, there wasn’t much we could do to stop it. It was Xylene’s idea, and if we hadn’t done it, that last ship would have gotten away. We may not have recovered all the missing warheads, but we kept this Vilgax from getting his hands on them.”

_ “And now we’re in for the fight of our lives.” _ Huxby snapped.  _ “But if the Galactic Enforcers think that they can just come storming in and take over, they’ve got another thing coming. I can’t rightly stop them from installing that Hyperwave relay they’ve been pestering us to let them put in for the last five years, but I can make damn sure that they put it on Tranquility Base and keep out of our hair. Earth is our planet to protect and we don’t need their help.” _

“Sir, if I hadn’t contacted Xylene and gotten their assistance, we would have never traced them to their operation in Mars and shut it down, much less recovered  _ any _ of the stolen nukes.” Max argued. “Maybe it’s time to rethink our policy on going it alone.”

_ “And maybe you ought to remember who’s in charge, Colonel. Get your asses home, that  _ crate _ you’re flying in is cleared to land at Area 51 to drop you off.” _

“Yes, sir.” Max said, keeping the huff out of his voice. There was a pause as Merlin disappeared, and then the female voice of Control replaced the old man’s voice.

_ “Having all the fun without me, Whiskey 1?” _ She teased him.  _ “Did you at least remember to grab my souvenir?” _

Max groaned. “Sorry, I’m pretty sure it got broken with the other dishes. I’ll have to get it for you next time.”

_ “Your debrief is going to take forever, you know that?” _

“I don’t see why it should.” Max argued playfully. “It was just another day at the office for us.”

“That’s a normal day?” Baylor said, exhausted. “What’s your whole call sign, sir? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” Max’s head snapped over to him and Baylor realized he’d vocalized that thought in his weariness. The woman back on the radio at Avalon laughed at it, though.

_ “Maybe it ought to be, for all the trouble you get into, Colonel.” _

“Now don’t you start.” 

_ “Come home soon, Whiskey Tango. Control, out.” _

As Baylor smiled and closed his eyes, Colonel Max Tennyson let out a soft groan and reached for the radio dial. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. You see what you did, Bales?”

“It suits you, sir. After this? I can’t think of a better team who deserves the label of  _ What The F -” _

“Ah!” Max cut him off and clicked the radio offline. “Whiskey Tango is fine.”

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, there's a lot of Ben 10 fanfiction out there, but little (to none) of it that bothers to spend any time on Grandpa Max and his career in the Plumbers. Which is a damn shame in my opinion because his backstory is wide open and FULL of possibilities. Thankfully, Shadows lets me pal around in the LM-Verse and fill in the gaps, and for my money, that's where the fun is. We know how Max's last mission with the Plumbers went in the LM-Verse; Vilgax sent packing and Earth breathing a sigh of relief when the alien warlord was no longer a threat on the board. But Vilgax knew about Earth since at least the mid-50's, given his spies within the Galactic Enforcers...For more on Vilgax's story, I recommend reading "Warlord Ascending." 
> 
> There's so much potential in the Ben 10 fandom for really good stories if you're willing to reach outside of your comfort zone and expand your horizons as both author and reader. For those of you who read our stuff and find inspiration, enjoyment, and personal growth out of it, thank you for your support and kind words. Reviews aren't necessary, but they're certainly welcome. Until the next time, LM-Verse fans!
> 
> -Erico


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